'Utter nonsense': Expert blows up Trump world's reason for acquiring Greenland

President-elect Donald Trump has long mused about bringing Greenland into the United States and recently he and his allies have claimed that America needs the territory due to its rich mineral deposits.

However, Bloomberg columnist Javier Blas examined the potential for significant deposits of precious minerals in Greenland and concluded that this justification for seizing the territory is "utter nonsense."

Among other things, Blas focused on the fact that Greenland's frigid climate makes whatever minerals can be extracted from the territory much more expensive than minerals extracted from countries with warmer climates.

"A 2023 Danish geological survey identified at least 50 locations with mineral potential," he writes. "Of them, more than half are north of the Arctic Circle, making their exploitation very hard and expensive, if not impossible. A handful, however, are in the ice-free southern tip of Greenland, opening the door to development. But most of them are small. Of the potentially large, perhaps the most interesting one is the Tanbreez rare earths deposit.Yet the geological report warns that Greenland has very little chance of developing its commodity deposits due to high production costs."

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Blas then knocks down claims that taking over Greenland could help the United States at the very least help America break China's current stranglehold on the rare earths market.

"Are the Greenlandic reserves of rare earths large? Not as far as we know," he argues. "According to the US Geological Survey, considered an authority in the field, the island contains 1.5 million tons. That puts Greenland in the world’s top 10, but well behind the US itself, as well as China, Brazil, Vietnam, India and Australia. Very likely, mining for rare earths in all of those countries would be easier and cheaper than in Greenland."

In fact, Blas identifies nations including the Democratic Republic of Congo, Chile, Peru, Brazil, and Mongolia as nations with the potential for real mineral extraction in a way that Greenland can never reach.

"Sadly, none of them is for sale," he concludes. "But neither is Greenland."