U.S. President-elect Donald Trump has not ruled out the use of force to bring the Panama Canal and Greenland under American control. His latest comments follow a suggestion to rename the Gulf of Mexico and references to Canada as the 51st U.S. state.
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00:00In a press conference, U.S. President-elect Donald Trump spoke about potentially broadening
00:07U.S. territory, making threats to seize Greenland and the Panama Canal.
00:12Your references to Greenland and the Panama Canal and so forth, can you assure the world
00:19that as you try to get control of these areas, you are not going to use military or economic
00:27coercion?
00:28I can't assure you.
00:29So you're talking about Panama and Greenland.
00:31No, I can't assure you on either of those two.
00:34But I can say this.
00:36We need them for economic security.
00:40Leaders in both Panama and Denmark, which controls Greenland, emphasized that while
00:45they value the United States as an ally, these are sovereign territories and not up for the
00:51taking.
00:52I want to express in a precise way that every square meter of the Panama Canal and its adjacent
00:57area is Panama's and will continue to be.
01:01The sovereignty and independence of our country are not negotiable.
01:06I would of course like to add a few words to the discussion about Greenland right now
01:10and make it very clear to see with the Danish government glasses that Greenland is the Greenlanders.
01:17It is a very, very proud people, it is a language, it is a culture.
01:21It is a population that is its own and as the chairman of the NADAC has said, Greenland
01:30is not for itself.
01:31Meanwhile, Donald Trump's son, Donald Trump Jr., has arrived in Greenland.
01:37He says he is visiting as a tourist, rather than representing his father on the trip.
01:42No, we're not meeting any politicians here, so that's not on the schedule.
01:45We're just here as tourists.
01:48President-elect Trump's comments follow recent statements he's made about the U.S.'s
01:52more immediate neighbours.
01:54He has suggested changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America and
01:59has repeatedly referred to Canada as the 51st state in the U.S.
02:05Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau responded to that assertion on X.
02:10Trump spent much of his first term promoting non-interventionist foreign policies and plans
02:16to continue, saying he wants to pull out of NATO.
02:20Some say his new claims to land in the Americas are in line with his other America First plans.
02:28So I think this is still consistent in terms of his logic that he is a unilateralist.
02:35He will decide whether I want to intervene or not.
02:38But even with that expansion, I think the idea of the expansion is still limited to
02:46the Western Hemisphere.
02:47You know, you talk about Greenland, you talk about Canada, even Panama in Central America.
02:53It's not like in Asia or in the Middle East.
02:57Since first taking office in 2016, Trump has been known for making incendiary remarks.
03:04Some of his plans have come to pass, while others have not.
03:09With only two weeks until his inauguration, leaders in the Americas and around the world
03:14will be watching closely to see how his expansionist rhetoric develops.
03:19James Lin and Sonia Schlesinger for Taiwan Plus.