The Rich in the US Are Getting Even Richer—and That’s Bad News for Our Democracy

These ultra-wealthy individuals have outsized influence on our democratic system—and have actively worked to undermine it.


SpaceX and Tesla founder Elon Musk speaks during an America PAC town hall on October 26, 2024 in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
(Photo by Samuel Corum/Getty Images)

Chris Mills Rodrigo
Jan 23, 2026

Inequality.org


The top 15 wealthiest people in America are part of a very, very exclusive club: those with over $100,000,000,000 in net worth. After double checking those zeroes, we can confidently say that yes, there are 15 centi-billionaires living among us.

And, according to a new Institute for Policy Studies analysis of data from the Forbes real time billionaire list, the combined wealth of that 12-figure club grew from $2.4 trillion to $3.1 trillion over the course of 2025.




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For context, that 30.3% rate of growth outpaced both the S&P 500 (16%) and billionaires in general (20.8%) over the last year. To put it succinctly, the wealthiest Americans are accumulating capital faster than everyone else.




The top 15 wealthiest billionaires aren’t the only ones doing well for themselves. Our analysis found that the number of US billionaires increased from 813 with combined wealth of $6.7 trillion at the end of 2024 to 935 US billionaires with combined assets of $8.1 trillion.

The top five wealthiest billionaires all saw huge wealth jumps in 2025.Elon Musk of Tesla-X and SpaceX with $726 billion, up from $421 billion a year ago.
Larry Page of Google, with $257 billion, up from $156 billion a year ago.
Larry Ellison of Oracle fame with $245 billion, up from $209 billion a year ago.
Jeff Bezos of Amazon with $242 billion, up from $233.5 billion a year ago.
Sergey Brin of Google with $237 billion, up from $148.9 billion a year ago.

The three wealthiest dynastic families in the US hold an estimated $757 billion, up from $657.8 billion at the end of 2024, a 16% gain. These are:Walton: Seven members of the Walton Family with combined wealth of $483 billion, up from $404.3 billion a year ago.
Mars: Six members of Mars family with combined wealth of $120 billion, down from $130.4 billion a year ago.
Koch: Two members of the Koch family have a combined wealth of $154.8 billion, up from $121.1 billion a year ago.

As we predicted it would at the time, the Covid-19 pandemic drastically accelerated wealth concentration.





On March 18, 2020, for example, Elon Musk had wealth valued just under $25 billion. A little over five years at the end of 2025, Musk’s wealth is $726 billion, a dizzying 2,800% increase from before the onset of the pandemic.

Jeff Bezos saw his wealth rise from $113 billion on March 18, 2020 to $242 billion at the end of 2025.

Three Walton family members—Jim, Alice and Rob—saw their combined assets increase from $161.1 billion on March 18, 2020 to $378 billion at the end of 2025.

The extreme concentration of wealth that our continued analysis of billionaires underscores is deeply concerning for the future of our country. These ultra-wealthy individuals have outsized influence on our democratic system—and have actively worked to undermine it. And these spectacular riches comes at the expense of workers, the ones who are actually generating wealth. Social services are being cut while tax burdens are eased on the rich.

Fighting back against wealth concentration will take a two-pronged approach. We have to empower the working class, strengthening unions and improving living conditions. We also have to raise and taxes and close wealth accumulation loopholes, or else billionaire power will only grow.


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.


Chris Mills Rodrigo
Chris Mills Rodrigo is the managing editor of Inequality.org

NOT A LOG CABIN REPUBLICAN

Scott Bessent’s Tragic Transformation

Instead of a principled voice for sound economic policies and principles, Bessent has become a cheerleader for Trump’s dubious financial moves.


US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent speaks at the 56th World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos, Switzerland on January 20, 2026.
(Photo by Harun Ozalp/Anadolu via Getty Images)

Steven Harper
Jan 22, 2026

Common Dreams



Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s job is to calm the economic fears that President Donald Trump creates. He has followed a curious journey to get there, and now he’s sacrificing his integrity and legacy to remain.

Stage 1: Democratic Fundraiser

Born in a small South Carolina town, Bessent, 63, graduated from Yale College in 1984 with a bachelor’s degree in political science. Eventually he went to work for Soros Fund Management—founded by the Republicans’ favorite Democratic demon, George Soros.

Bessent is openly gay, married since 2011 to a former New York City prosecutor, and has been a strong advocate for gay rights and marriage equality. In 2000, he supported Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore, co-hosting a fundraiser for him in East Hampton, New York. He donated $2,300 to Barack Obama’s campaign in 2007. Although he donated $25,000 to support Hillary Clinton’s presidential aspirations, by then he was a major donor to Republican candidates.

Stage 2: Republican Oligarch

Bessent returned to work for Soros in 2011 as chief investment officer but left in 2016 to form his own fund for which Soros provided a $2 billion anchor. From 2018 through 2021, as the global stock market broke records, the performance of Bessent’s fund was mediocre. Still, he amassed an estimated wealth of $600 million, although some reports refer to him as one of “Trump’s billionaires.”

Bessent and his husband have two children studying in Europe. As they process the European reaction to Trump, they may ask him what he is doing to make the world a better place.

Bessent donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration in 2016, but was not part of the first term’s inner circle. When Trump left office in disgrace after January 6 and under the cloud of other legal woes, most business leaders were reluctant to support him publicly. But as Bessent said on Roger Stone’s radio show in 2024: “I was all in for President Trump. I was one of the few Wall Street people backing him.”

The 68 senators who voted to confirm Bessent as Treasury secretary probably hoped that, like Marco Rubio at the State Department, Bessent would be an “adult in the room.” Unlike other members of the clown car comprising Trump’s cabinet, Bessent would save the nation from Trump’s worst financial impulses.

After all, the country has never had a president who declared bankruptcy six times (although Trump told the Washington Post that he had only four because he counted the first three bankruptcies as one).

Stage 3 :Trump Sycophant

Instead of a principled voice for sound economic policies and principles, Bessent has become a cheerleader for Trump’s dubious financial moves. At times, he has resorted to rhetorical gymnastics to explain away Trump’s plain language. For example:On April 2, 2025, on what Trump called “Liberation Day,” the president announced his first round of universal tariffs. The thoughtless imposition of across-the-board tariffs was often nonsensical, such as tariffs on uninhabited islands near Antarctica and on countries with which the US has a trade surplus. Trump sent global markets into a tailspin and US interest rates upward. Five days later, Bessent admitted that he was surprised by the “impatience” of commentators and the financial markets. He tried to stop the carnage by saying that Trump’s bizarre action was simply a clever negotiating strategy—which made little sense to the penguins of Antarctica.

In September, as major US companies announced the loss of billions of dollars resulting from Trump’s tariffs, Bessent dismissed their concerns.

Bessent—who is not an economist—has parroted the Trump line that tariffs are not a tax on American businesses and consumers because foreign exporters bear the cost. A broad consensus of economists has concluded otherwise, and a major study released on January 19 found that consumers and businesses—not foreign exporters—bear 96% of tariff costs.
As Trump touted tariffs as a boon to manufacturing, Bessent acknowledged that the US has been losing manufacturing jobs. But he insists that better days are coming.

When Trump tried to fire Federal Reserve Board Governor Lisa Cook, Bessent said that the Fed’s independence was important, but that Trump had the right to fire her. After reportedly trying to persuade Trump not to fire Fed Chair Jerome Powell, Bessent has now become one of Powell’s most vocal attackers—along with Trump’s Justice Department.

When the US Supreme Court heard oral argument in the case challenging Trump’s tariffs, Bessent sat in the front row. Now he’s criticizing Powell’s decision to attend the oral argument in Cook’s case.

Most recently, Trump blamed his threat of a global trade war on Denmark’s refusal to let the US take over its longstanding territory, Greenland. In a social media post on Saturday morning, January 17, Trump announced new 10% tariffs on Denmark and the countries who stood with it in resisting Trump’s demand: Norway, Sweden, France, Germany, Britain, the Netherlands, and Finland, effective February 1. He threatened to increase the levies to 25% on June 1, unless Europe capitulated.

Sunday evening, January 18, NPR‘s Nick Schifrin posted a letter that Trump had previously sent to Norway’s prime minister, Jonas Gahr Støre. Trump revealed that after not winning last year’s Nobel Peace Prize “for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS,” he “no longer feel[s] an obligation to think purely of Peace, although it will always be predominant, but can now think about what is good and proper for the United States of America… The World is not secure unless we have Complete and Total Control of Greenland.”

Hours after the public disclosure of Trump’s message, Bessent held an impromptu press conference on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. He tried to explain away Trump’s childish fit: “I think it’s a complete canard that the president will be doing this because of the Nobel Prize,” Bessent asserted. Accusing Trump’s critics of “hysteria,” Bessent said, “What I am urging everyone here to do is sit back, take a deep breath, and let things play out.” His words fell flat, and he looked as uncomfortable as he must have felt.

In Brussels on January 21, the European Parliament protested Trump’s demand by suspending its work on the previously negotiated US-EU trade deal. Meanwhile at Davos, Trump delivered a 90-minute screed that insulted many European leaders by name and reiterated his demand for Greenland. But later that day, Trump posted that he and NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte had worked out a “framework of a future deal with respect to Greenland and, in fact, the entire Arctic Region.” And he walked back the new European tariffs he’d threatened to impose on February 1.

Stage 4: The Coming Quest for Rehabilitation

Bessent seems destined to follow the paths of other Trump enablers who eventually left the fold, like former Attorney General William Barr. He neutered the Mueller Report on Russian election interference during the 2016 election, only to resign 18 months later as January 6 approached. Eventually, Bessent will find himself on the outs with Trump, write a book, pursue a public speaking “redemption tour,” and explain that his government service saved the country from Trump’s worst impulses.

Such a rationalization rings hollow.

Bessent and his husband have two children studying in Europe. As they process the European reaction to Trump, they may ask him what he is doing to make the world a better place. The answer is also his legacy: In the process of sacrificing his personal integrity, Bessent has disserved the nation.


Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.


Steven Harper
Steven J. Harper is an attorney, adjunct professor at Northwestern University Law School, and author of several books, including Crossing Hoffa -- A Teamster's Story and The Lawyer Bubble -- A Profession in Crisis. He has been a regular columnist for Moyers on Democracy, Dan Rather's News and Guts, and The American Lawyer. Follow him at https://thelawyerbubble.com.
Full Bio >

Imbecile Trump Threatens Americans With $75 Billion Tax Hike So He Can Conquer Greenland

If you missed Trump’s plans to hit us with this tax hike it’s because of the consistently awful reporting we get from major media outlets.

The headquarters of the European Central Bank (ECB) is seen behind shipping containers of the Frankfurt container port on January 19, 2026 in Frankfurt, Germany. European leaders are scheduled to meet later this week to coordinate their response to the latest tariffs threat from U.S. Donald Trump. Trump recently announced he will impose punitive tariffs on European countries he sees as obstructing his desire to acquire Greenland.
(Photo by Thomas Lohnes/Getty Images)


Dean Baker
Jan 19, 2026

Beat the Press

Donald Trump is taking his demented dreams to a new level in his quest to take over Greenland. The man who whined over not getting a Nobel Prize and then followed Hitler propagandist Joseph Goebbels lead in accepting a prize awarded to someone else, has now decided he wants Greenland.

Trump is now proposing to whack us with a $75 billion tax increase to put pressure on Denmark and the rest of the EU to give him Greenland. If you missed Trump’s plans to hit us with this tax hike it’s because of the consistently awful reporting we get from major media outlets.


‘Insane’: Trump Threatens 8 Allies With New Tariffs for Opposing Greenland Takeover

They reported on the tariffs Trump is imposing on the European countries most visible in resisting U.S. pressure to take Greenland. The problem with the reporting is that it implies the European countries pay the tariffs. They don’t, we do.

This is not a debatable point; the data are very clear. Well over 90 percent of the cost of a Trump tariff is borne by consumers or importers in the United States, not by the exporting countries. When Trump starts yelling “tariff, tariff, tariff,” he is yelling “tax, tax, tax,” and we’re the ones paying it. And $75 billion is not trivial. It’s one percent of the budget, more than twice the cost of the enhanced premiums for Obamacare policies that Trump says we can’t afford.

Let’s be clear, Trump wants Greenland because it is big. And he almost certainly thinks Greenland is far bigger than it actually is because he doesn’t understand that the Mercator projection maps, which are standard ones we all use, hugely exaggerate the size of areas near the poles.

No one likes the idea that the United States is being run by a moron.

We all know Trump says that he needs Greenland for national security. This argument is not worth a second’s consideration. Greenland and Denmark are both members of NATO. If he felt there was some need for putting additional military assets in or around Denmark, all he has to do is ask.

In fact, there were many more United States military installations in Denmark during the Cold War. We removed them after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Trump’s team themselves made it clear that Greenland is not a national security issue. The country is not even mentioned once in Trump’s National Security Strategy plan that was crafted just two months ago.

Trump effectively admitted this in an interview with the New York Times earlier this month. He acknowledged that he could address any security issues through negotiation with Greenland, Denmark, and the rest of NATO, but said Trump said that he would feel better “psychologically” taking over Greenland.

He compared it to the difference between owning and renting. Insofar as Trump feels a psychological need to own territory that is something that is best addressed through therapy, not military action against allies.

The other argument is that Greenland is rich in rare earth minerals, which Trump’s rich buddies are anxious to exploit. This is popular among people who want to highlight both Trump’s venality and also find rationality in what seems to be an otherwise crazy quest.

While no one should ever underestimate Trump’s corruption, the story doesn’t make any sense. First, it’s not clear that there is big money to be made on Greenland’s rare earth minerals. It is a remote area with little infrastructure. It will be extremely expensive to reach these minerals and would almost certainly take many years. Given developments in technology, it’s not even clear these minerals will still be of much value at the point anyone is able to bring them to the market.

But what’s even more damning for this line of argument is that they could start mining in Greenland tomorrow, if they think it would be profitable. Greenland is very open to foreign investment. If they think there is big money to be made by mining Greenland’s minerals, they would be doing it already.

Trump’s rich friends are undoubtedly pushing for him to take Greenland, he’ll probably give them better deals than Greenland would. Most importantly he will likely get rid of environmental regulations that Greenland’s government would demand.

But the cost of environmental regulations is not likely to be the sort of thing that would warrant a military invasion. Also, it probably is not a good sell to the people of Greenland that Trump wants to take away their ability to protect their environment.

At the end of the day, we really can’t escape the basic story, Trump wants Greenland because it is big. No one likes the idea that the United States is being run by a moron. And it’s painful for those of us left of center to acknowledge that this is who we losing to, not some evil genius. However, that happens to be the reality, and we need to recognize it.


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License


Dean Baker  is the co-founder and the senior economist of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR). He is the author of several books, including "Getting Back to Full Employment: A Better bargain for Working People," "The End of Loser Liberalism: Making Markets Progressive," "The United States Since 1980," "Social Security: The Phony Crisis" (with Mark Weisbrot), and "The Conservative Nanny State: How the Wealthy Use the Government to Stay Rich and Get Richer." He also has a blog, "Beat the Press," where he discusses the media's coverage of economic issues.
Full Bio >

Scott Bessent just exposed 'insanity' behind Trump's latest ploy: analyst

Robert Davis
January 19, 2026 

RAW STORY


U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent gives a statement during the 56th annual World Economic Forum (WEF) meeting, at the USA House venue, in Davos, Switzerland, January 19, 2026. REUTERS/Denis Balibouse


President Donald Trump's Treasury Secretary just revealed the "insanity" behind Trump's ploy to control Greenland, according to one analyst

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent joined NBC News's "Meet the Press" on Sunday to discuss Trump's efforts to wrest control of Greenland from the Kingdom of Denmark. Will Saletan, writer for The Bulwark, discussed Bessent's interview in a new video for "Bulwark Takes," which he said was one of the most "embarrassing" of the entire administration.

"He's twisting himself into a pretzel to justify Trump's totally crazy threats against Greenland," Saletan said.

Trump has said that acquiring the country is in America's national interests, although experts have questioned some of the motives the Trump administration has floated to justify the move. The president has repeatedly threatened to invade Greenland, which Danish officials have said would be an "end of NATO" moment, and he recently imposed a 10% tariff on all goods from certain EU countries, including Denmark.

Bessent justified Trump's actions by arguing that the U.S. doesn't want to get dragged into someone else's war to defend the territory, and said the Trump administration is working off of "asymmetric information" to make its decisions about Greenland.

"See, that is information nobody else has," Saletan said. "Not the Danish government, which actually has sovereignty over Greenland and has way better intelligence than we do, and not the Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee, who would know if we really did have secret information about Russia and China operating in Greenland. No, Trump and Bessant have information that is so secret they haven't shared it with anybody else. Almost as though they're making it up."

Stop ‘appeasing’ bully Trump, Amnesty chief tells Europe

By AFP
January 19, 2026


Amnesty International Secretary General Agnes Callamard on the opening day of the World Economic Forum (WEF) annual meeting in Davos - Copyright AFP Fabrice COFFRINI
Elodie LE MAOU

The leader of global rights group Amnesty International urged European countries Monday to stop “appeasing” US President Donald Trump and resist him and other “bullies” who she said were intent on destroying the rules-based order in place since World War II.

“We need much more resistance,” Amnesty secretary general Agnes Callamard told AFP in an interview on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

“Europe’s credibility is at stake.”

Her comments came as Trump doubled down on his threats to take over Greenland “one way or the other”, insisting such a move is necessary for world security, prompting European countries to close ranks against his designs on the vast Danish territory.

German and French leaders denounced as “blackmail” Trump’s weekend threats to wield new tariffs against countries which oppose his plans for the Arctic island, suggesting Europe was preparing trade countermeasures.

But German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who was due to meet Trump in Davos on Wednesday, also stressed that Europe was eager to “avoid any escalation” in the dispute.



– ‘Say no’ –



Callamard urged governments to show more “courage” and to “say no”.

“Stop thinking you can make deals with bullies, stop thinking you can agree to the rules of the predators and not become yourself a victim of them.”

The Amnesty chief highlighted that the US bid to seize Greenland was only the latest indication that the world is facing the “destruction of the rules-based order”.

She lamented that global and regional “superpowers” seemed “intent on destroying what has been established after World War II, dedicated to finding common rules to our common problems”.

Since Trump’s return to the White House a year ago, he has taken “a range of decisions that have led to the demise of many rules around the world”, while Russia was destroying the system “through its aggression in Ukraine”, she said.

European powers have been treading a thin line over Ukraine in recent months, relying on Washington to try to help settle the conflict but resisting terms too favourable to Moscow.

The post-WWII order “is also being destroyed by Israel that has completely ignored international law in its genocide of Palestinians in Gaza,” she added.

Amnesty and other rights groups have repeatedly accused Israel of carrying out a genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, a term vehemently rejected by the Israeli government.

Callamard stressed that the rules-based order was established in response to “a global war that had killed millions of people, as a response to extermination camps that had killed six million Jews, as a response to authoritarianism that had led to the most daunting global repression the world over”.



– ‘Abyss’ –



“The fact that it is now being destroyed without any plan B, just for the sake of destroying the rules, should send shivers to all of us,” she said, warning that the only alternative to the rules-based system was “falling down into an abyss”.

“That’s what we need to prevent.”

The Davos gathering this year is taking place under the tagline “A Spirit of Dialogue”, but Callamard warned “there is no evidence of dialogue” currently among the world’s decision-makers.

“There is evidence of bullying. There is evidence of destruction. There is evidence of countries using their military power, their economic power, to force others into agreeing to their one-sided deals.”

Such tactics had for the past 12 months been met with European “appeasement”.

“We have sought to appease the bully, the predator living in Washington,” she said.

“Where has this led us? To more and more attacks, to more and more threats.”

Callamard, who is French, recalled that the European project was not just about economics, but also about values, humanity and the rule of law.

“I’m hoping that our leaders will recall that… history and see in the current challenges a way of re-insisting on the European project and demanding human rights protection for the sake of humanity,” she said.

“That demands stopping the appeasement politics, (which) simply is not working”.

“Please stop it. Resist. Resist.”

Leading economist teaches Europe how to cripple Trump

Jake Johnson,

 Common Dreams
January 19, 2026 


Jesper Toennesen, the creator of the Anti-MAGA cap "Nu det NUUK!" which is sold in his clothing store McKorman on Noerrebrogade, looks on, in Copenhagen, Denmark, January 13, 2026. The message "Nu er det NUUK!" and "Make America go away" is embroidered on the cap. After the heated debate between the U.S., Greenland, and Denmark about Trump's renewed desire to take over Greenland, "Nu er det NUUK" has gone viral on the internet. The phrase "Nu er det NUUK!" refers to Greenland's capital Nuuk - and can be translated from Danish as "Enough is enough"

Thomas Traasdahl/Ritzau Scanpix/via REUTERS

The leading French economist Gabriel Zucman is urging European governments to inflict financial pain on American billionaires in response to US President Donald Trump’s effort to seize control of Greenland, a mineral-rich island that some of Trump’s rich campaign donors see as a potentially massive profit opportunity.

“Europe should respond to Trump’s blackmail with targeted measures aimed not at American consumers, but at American billionaires,” Zucman wrote in a post on his Substack. “Access to the European market—by billionaires and the companies they own—should be made conditional on paying a wealth tax: in effect, a tariff for oligarchs. If Elon Musk, for example, wants to keep selling Teslas in Europe, he should have to pay it. If he refuses, Tesla would lose access to the European market.”Zucman outlined his proposal after Trump threatened over the weekend to hit France, the United Kingdom, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, and Finland with tariffs up to 25% if they don’t drop their opposition to the US president’s demand for “the complete and total purchase of Greenland,” an autonomous territory of Denmark.

The targeted countries are currently weighing retaliatory tariffs and other potential responses to Trump’s threat.

Zucman, a renowned expert on global inequality, argued that while existing mechanisms such as the anti-coercion instrument known as Europe’s trade “bazooka” can be useful, “anti-oligarchic protectionism has a decisive advantage: It opens a two-front struggle against Trump, at home and abroad.”

“By targeting oligarchic wealth rather than national pride,” Zucman wrote, “Europe can blunt Trump’s ability to mobilize nationalist resentment and rally part of the American public behind his imperial agenda.”

Trump’s proposed Greenland takeover is widely opposed by the island’s population and US voters. But as journalist Casey Michel wrote for The New Republic last week, there is one key constituency that stands to benefit massively from a US takeover of the mineral-rich territory: American oligarchs, including some of Trump’s top campaign donors.

“Ranging from tech moguls to fossil fuel company heads, all of these figures and forces have invested in mining and extraction companies across the island—and all stand to profit if only they can cut out any pesky Danish or Greenlandic authorities from regulating or restraining their operations,” wrote Michel. “The figures behind the curtain are by no means obscure. KoBold Metals, a mining outfit helping lead Greenland’s ‘modern gold rush,’ has seen investments from figures like Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, and hedge funds like Andreessen Horowitz.”

“Another company eyeing Greenland,” Michel added, “is Critical Metals Corp, which is backed by the same hedge fund that Howard Lutnick, now Trump’s commerce secretary, spent years running.”

“The vast fortunes of the sleaze buckets who put Trump into the White House and back his attack on democracy in the United States and around the world will suddenly be thrown into question.”

Tariffs targeting such firms and the billionaires behind them, Zucman argued, would be the most effective way to penalize Trump’s reckless behavior and deter him in the future.

“If imperialism is driven by oligarchic power, then oligarchic power must be confronted,” Zucman wrote. “What are the alternatives? Doing nothing invites endless blackmail.”

US economist Dean Baker, co-founder of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, made the case for a similarly aggressive European response to Trump’s economic warfare.

“European countries can announce that they will no longer honor US-owned patents and copyrights,” Baker wrote Monday. “Putting US patents and copyrights on the line is a guaranteed attention grabber. The vast fortunes of the sleaze buckets who put Trump into the White House and back his attack on democracy in the United States and around the world will suddenly be thrown into question.”

“The key point is that European countries, by opting to not respect US patents and copyrights, have an incredibly powerful weapon to use against Donald Trump and his rich supporters,” Baker added. “The time has come for them to go nuclear.”

'Who does it benefit?' Expert reveals who Trump is really helping with Greenland fantasy

Matthew Chapman
January 19, 2026 
RAW STORY


FILE PHOTO: U.S. President Donald Trump is interviewed by Reuters White House correspondent Steve Holland (not pictured) during an exclusive interview in the Oval Office in the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., January 14, 2026. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein/File Photo

President Donald Trump's designs on Greenland seem almost perfectly calculated to be a boon to Russia and Vladimir Putin, New York University professor and authoritarianism expert Ruth Ben-Ghiat told MS NOW's Ari Melber on Monday evening.

"Ruth, what do you see as the validity of this move?" asked Melber. "On a scale of 0 to 10, we're seeing a lot of folks say zero. It has — it's not a risk/reward, it has no particular validity. What do you rate it? And then what do you think is really going on with Trump and this plan?"

"Well, it has zero validity from a point of view of anybody other than an autocrat, a megalomaniac autocrat," said Ben-Ghiat, a frequent critic of Trump. "But what's going on is, you know, Trump talked about trying to buy Greenland in 2019. And the then-Secretary of State [Mike] Pompeo went along with it, saying that, you know, global warming will liberate all these precious minerals and oil and discovered oil. So there's that."

"The other thing is that I believe that Trump is in office, in part, to solve Vladimir Putin's problems and creating a crisis for NATO and dividing NATO and having the U.S. go rogue in ways that are quite authoritarian," she continued. "Who does it benefit? It benefits Putin. And the other thing is that, unfortunately, autocrats can get into a state, I call this 'autocratic backfire,' when they believe their own hype, and they become convinced that nothing can restrain them. And Donald Trump recently gave an interview to The New York Times saying that he was restrained only by his own mind, which is not reassuring, and his own morality."

Melber agreed with this assessment, adding that Trump appears to be "believing the hype."


Ultimately, Ben Ghiat added, Trump "had almost like a narcissistic ego injury when he did not get the Peace Prize. And he talked about it in many, many posts. And Machado of Venezuela gave him hers, but that didn't satisfy him. And so he actually wrote to the Norwegian Prime Minister saying that because he didn't get, as you said in the introduction, because he didn't get the Peace Prize, he feels no obligation to care about peace. And so when autocrats are denied something, they go into a kind of rage and they take it out both on their own people and in this case, on the continent of Europe, by threatening economic warfare with the tariffs."

Trump's Greenland push highlights 'real danger' of president's second term: expert

Ewan Gleadow
January 20, 2026 
RAW STORY


U.S. President Donald Trump points a finger during a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (not pictured) in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, U.S., April 7, 2025. REUTERS/Kevin Mohatt

Donald Trump's continued interest in Greenland highlights a bigger hazard than first thought according to a political commentator.

Christopher Bucktin, writing in The Daily Mirror, suggested the president's interest in taking Greenland into US control highlights a larger problem for world nations to stand against. Bucktin wrote, "The real danger is how familiar this all feels. Each outrageous threat lands, causes a stir, then fades."

"The bar drops. What once would have sparked fury is now dismissed as “just Trump being Trump”. That shrug is how norms and society collapse."

"This is no longer theatre. It’s a warning. Trump’s obsession with power, territory and punishment has turned him into a genuine threat to world order. The only unanswered question is how much damage he will be allowed to do before the world finally tells him his shakedown is over."

Trump has made it clear he wants Greenland for national security purposes, and has since lashed out at NATO members opposing his desire for the country to be subsumed into the US.

Tariff actions were applied to eight nations, including Germany, the United Kingdom, and Denmark. The president has also posted to Truth Social earlier today (January 20) denouncing the UK for giving up an island with a US military base.

He wrote, "Shockingly, our 'brilliant' NATO Ally, the United Kingdom, is currently planning to give away the Island of Diego Garcia, the site of a vital U.S. Military Base, to Mauritius, and to do so FOR NO REASON WHATSOEVER."

"There is no doubt that China and Russia have noticed this act of total weakness. These are International Powers who only recognize STRENGTH, which is why the United States of America, under my leadership, is now, after only one year, respected like never before."

"The UK giving away extremely important land is an act of GREAT STUPIDITY, and is another in a very long line of National Security reasons why Greenland has to be acquired. Denmark and its European Allies have to DO THE RIGHT THING. Thank you for your attention to this matter. PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP."

Trump says world ‘not secure’ until US has Greenland

By AFP
January 19, 2026


Danish soldiers disembark in Nuuk, Greenland, on January 18, 2026, as US President Donald Trump steps up his threats to take the Arctic territory from NATO ally Denmark - Copyright Ritzau Scanpix/AFP Mads Claus Rasmussen

Pierre-Henry DESHAYES, with Johannes LEDEL in Stockholm

Donald Trump no longer needs to think “purely of peace” after being snubbed for a Nobel, the US president said in comments published Monday, adding the world will not be safe until Washington controls Greenland.

Trump has put the transatlantic alliance to the test with threats to take over Greenland “one way or the other”, with European countries closing ranks against Washington’s designs on the vast Danish territory.

German and French leaders denounced as “blackmail” weekend threats by Trump to wield new tariffs against countries which oppose his plans for the Arctic island, and said Monday that Europe was preparing trade countermeasures.

The European Union said it was holding an emergency summit on Thursday to weigh its response, and that while its priority is to “engage not escalate” it is ready to act if needed.

Greenland, for its part, said the tariffs threat does not change its desire to assert its own sovereignty.

“We will not be pressured,” Greenlandic prime minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen said in a Facebook post, adding that the autonomous territory “is a democratic society with the right to make its own decisions”.

But Trump had earlier doubled down, announcing in a message to Norway’s Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store that the world “is not secure unless we have Complete and Total Control of Greenland”.

The message — published Monday and whose authenticity was confirmed to AFP by Store’s office — also saw Trump brush aside peace as a primary goal.

“I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace,” he said, citing his failure to win the last year’s Nobel Peace Prize, despite openly coveting it.

He said although peace would still be “predominant,” he could “now think about what is good and proper for the United States of America.”

Store said the statement had been received in response to a message from him and Finnish President Alexander Stubb, where they had “conveyed our opposition” to Trump’s tariff threats.

Store also underlined that the Nobel Peace Prize was not awarded by the Norwegian government.

“I have clearly explained, including to President Trump what is well known — the prize is awarded by an independent Nobel Committee,” he said in a written statement.



– Russia, China threat? –



Trump has repeatedly said his country needs vast, mineral-rich Greenland for “national security”, despite the United States already having a base on the island and security agreements with fellow NATO ally Denmark.

“Denmark cannot protect that land from Russia or China,” Trump said in his message to the Norwegian premier, doubling down on that sentiment in a post to Truth Social on Monday.

Denmark’s defence minister Troels Lund Poulsen said Monday steps had already been taken along with NATO allies to “increase military presence and training activity in the Arctic and the North Atlantic”.

Lund Poulsen added that he and Greenlandic foreign minister Vivian Motzfeldt would be meeting with NATO chief Mark Rutte later on Monday.



– ‘Blackmail’ –



This weekend, Trump said that from February 1, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Finland would be subject to a 10-percent tariff on all goods sent to the United States — a duty which could go higher.

Germany’s vice chancellor Lars Klingbeil slammed the move as blackmail, and said Monday that Europe was preparing countermeasures.

French finance minister Roland Lescure, speaking at a press conference alongside Kingbeil, agreed.

“Blackmail between allies of 250 years, blackmail between friends, is obviously unacceptable,” Lecurse said.

Klingbeil said Europe’s response could have three main strands.

First, the current tariff deal with the United States would be put on hold, he said.

Second, European tariffs on imports from the United States, currently suspended until early February, could come into force.

And thirdly the EU should consider using its toolbox of instruments against “economic blackmail”, he added.

Europe’s stock markets fell as the week’s trading began Monday, with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer warning that a “trade war is in no one’s interest”.

Greenland — whose tiny population of 57,000 has voiced disquiet at Trump’s threats — continued to make its preferences clear Monday.

Greenland’s dogsled federation said that the new US special envoy to the Arctic island had been disinvited to its annual race.

Jeff Landry had been invited to attend the race by a private Greenlandic tour operator, an invite the KNQK federation has previously called “totally inappropriate”.

burs-jll/st

 Trump in Greenland: Old-Fashioned Colonialism And Acceleration Of The Climate Catastrophe!

By Yorgos Mitralias

January 18, 2026

Source: Originally published by Z. Feel free to share widely.

Photo from Craig James (Flickr, CC BY-NC 2.0)

Almost everyone is currently talking, and rightly so, about Trump’s clearly stated intention to occupy and annex Greenland “by hook or by crook.” However, no one has even mentioned what would be by far the most important and serious consequence of this imperialist and colonialist act of unbridled Trumpism: the enormous acceleration and worsening of the climate catastrophe already underway! An acceleration of the climate crisis with nightmarish effects for humanity, which would be incomparably greater than all the—much-discussed—geopolitical and other consequences of its occupation by the United States.

Indeed, given that Greenland is the nerve center of global warming, warming about four times faster than the rest of the world, Trump’s intention to gut it in order to proceed with the widespread plundering of its subsoil, rich in rare earths and even gold and oil, in the name of “US national security,” will only greatly accelerate what is already happening: the melting of its ice cap—the second largest after Antarctica—which has the direct consequence of raising sea levels! A rise in sea levels that is already disrupting ocean currents, to the point of threatening them with collapse.

And to leave no doubt as to the seriousness of this threat, here is what was reported by the world’s major news agencies two months ago: “ Iceland has designated the potential collapse of a major Atlantic Ocean current system a national security concern and an existential threat, enabling its government to strategize for worst-case scenarios, the country’s climate minister told Reuters. ” (1). Indeed, according to climatologists, the increasingly likely collapse of the ocean current system known as AMOC (Meridional Overturning Circulation) “would have devastating and irreversible consequences, particularly for Nordic countries, but also for other regions of the world.” It would raise sea levels in the Atlantic, alter monsoons in South America and Africa, reduce rainfall in Europe and North America, causing a winter cold snap in Europe, with sea ice likely to extend southward to the United Kingdom!

In short, the imminent (?) occupation of Greenland by Trump and his acolytes confirms once again not only how little the climate-denying Trump cares about protecting the environment, but also his total disregard for international law and the rights of indigenous peoples. This contempt was highlighted in all its facets a few days ago by the White House ideologue and strongman Stephen Miller during his interview with CNN.

Preaching a return to the good old days of unapologetic colonialism, Trump’s chief advisor and confidant Stephen Miller, who takes pleasure in drawing inspiration from… Goebbels in his speeches and ideas (!), caused a scandal by making the following statements: “” Not long after World War II the West dissolved its empires and colonies and began sending colossal sums of taxpayer-funded aid to these former territories (despite have already made them far wealthier and more successful). The West opened its borders, a kind of reverse colonization, providing welfare and thus remittances, while extending to these newcomers and their families not only the full franchise but preferential legal and financial treatment over the native citizenry. The neoliberal experiment, at its core, has been a long self-punishment of the places and peoples that built the modern world“. And after this veritable eulogy to old-style colonialism, followed by an unequivocal condemnation of decolonization, Miller concluded by describing the frightening credo of Trumpism: ” We live in a world in which you can talk all you want about international niceties and everything else. But we live in a world, in the real world … that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world. (…) We’re a superpower. And under President Trump, we are going to conduct ourselves as a superpower “.

So we have been warned. The real novelty is not that the United States under Trump will act like a superpower, which it already did long before him, but rather that it will act like an old-fashioned colonial superpower! That is to say, practicing direct domination and plunder, unapologetic racism and brute military violence, without the intermediaries, the pseudo-solidarity and democratic hypocrisy, the half-measures, and everything that has made up neocolonialism over the last 6-7 decades! Clearly, the break with the imperialist past is quite significant. This means that Trump’s claims on Venezuela or Greenland are not the passing whims of a deranged and megalomaniacal old man, but rather the first signs and manifestations of a long-term global political, economic, and military project designed to upset all existing balances, including those between the imperialist powers. (2) All the more so as Trump no longer hesitates to publicly display his nostalgia for the good old days when white supremacists practiced their deadly racism with impunity, or his criticism of the American Civil War that saw the defeat of his beloved Southern slave owners…

How naive and irresponsible, then, are those who persist in confusing Trump with Biden, Bush, or the… European Commission. Or who are not preparing to face the racist, militaristic, and warmongering cataclysm heralded by this return to the most extreme capitalist barbarism promised by Trumpism through the mouth of its ideologue Stephen Miller. It is therefore up to all of us to stop Trump and his evil and criminal plans before it is too late. For only our fatalism and passivity can guarantee Trump the success of his predatory, criminal policies, steeped in delusional racism and deeply inhuman. In short, nothing is decided in advance and the outcome of this mother of all battles depends exclusively on us, on those from below everywhere in the world. Starting with those who are already fighting at the heart of the fascist monster, in the United States of America…

Notes

1. Iceland deems possible Atlantic current collapse a security risk: https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/cop/iceland-sees-security-risk-existential-threat-atlantic-ocean-currents-possible-2025-11-12/

2. Testifying in 2019 before the US Congress, Fiona Hill, then Trump’s senior advisor on Russia and Europe, reported on “suggestions” from Kremlin circles regarding Moscow’s possible acceptance of the US occupation of Venezuela in exchange for Washington’s acceptance of Russia’s occupation of Ukraine. Returning a few days ago to her 2019 testimony, Ms. Hill said that the lack of reaction and relative passivity shown by the Kremlin in response to the recent US military operation in Venezuela and the subsequent looting of its hydrocarbons would suggest a possible update of this “exchange” suggested by Moscow in 2019 and rejected at the time by Trump.

 Comment

The Tech Billionaires Behind Trump’s Greenland Push

Today Trump announced 10% tariffs against 8 European countries that oppose his takeover of Greenland.

By Lois Parshley

January 19, 2026

Source: The Lever

Kulusuk, Greenland | Image credit: Nick Russill/Flickr, Attribution CC 2.0 Generic

President Donald Trump started his second term with his sights set on Greenland.

When Trump first proposed buying the arctic nation during his first administration, it was treated like a joke. But in a phone call last week with Denmark’s prime minister, who controls the autonomous territory’s foreign policy, the president doubled down on his efforts to seize power. In the “aggressive and confrontational” conversation, Trump threatened tariffs if he didn’t get his way. In a news conference earlier this month, he also refused to rule out the use of military force. Now Denmark is taking him seriously: on Monday, it announced a $2 billion military expansion in the Arctic.

Though the island is not for sale, the president emphasized Greenland’s importance to US national security. Left unspoken: a US takeover could weaken the country’s mining laws and ban on private property, aiding Trump donors’ plans to profit from the island’s mineral deposits and build a libertarian techno-city.

Trump, who has summarized his own natural resources policy as “drill, baby, drill,” would likely approach the island’s natural resources quite differently from Greenland’s current government, which has opposed large extractive projects.

In 2019, Trump’s ambassador to Denmark and Greenland visited a major rare-earth mining project on the island shortly before Trump’s first calls to buy the country. Opposition to the mine ushered liberal political party Inuit Ataqatigiit into power two years later, which halted the mine and banned all future oil development.

The president’s renewed intention to take over Greenland has reignited debates over its sovereignty, as the country grapples with the trade-offs between economic opportunity and independence from Denmark. As the country’s glaciers recede, it’s also facing sweeping climate-driven transformations, threatening traditional industries like fishing and hunting and exposing valuable mineral resources.

These shifts have prompted interest from powerful players associated with Trump. Tech moguls in the front row of his inauguration, like Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos, are also investors in a start-up aiming to mine western Greenland for materials crucial to the artificial intelligence boom.

That company, KoBold Metals, uses artificial intelligence to locate and extract rare earth minerals. Their proprietary algorithm parses government-funded geological surveys and other data to locate significant deposits. The program pinpointed southwest Greenland’s rugged coastline, where the company now has a 51 percent stake in the Disko-Nuussuaq project, searching for minerals like copper.

Just two weeks before some of its investors were glad-handing at the Capitol celebrations, KoBold Metals raised $537 million in its latest funding round, bringing its valuation to almost $3 billion. Among the contributors was a leading venture capital firm founded by Marc Andreessen, an early Silicon Valley entrepreneur who has helped shape the administration’s technology policies, including consulting with Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency as a self-proclaimed “unpaid intern.”

“We believe in adventure,” Andreessen wrote in a lengthy 2023 manifesto that outlined his criticisms of centralized government, advocating for technologists to take control, “rebelling against the status quo, mapping uncharted territory, conquering dragons, and bringing home the spoils for our community.” Connie Chan, a general partner at his venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, is listed as a KoBold director in its 2022 Securities and Exchange Commission filing.

In addition to KoBold, Andreessen has also backed other ventures eyeing the arctic nation: he is a significant investor in Praxis Nation, a project aiming to use Greenland to establish a “crypto state,” a self-governing, experimental community built around libertarian ideals and technology like cryptocurrency.

The venture is also funded in part by Pronomos Capital, a venture capital group founded by the grandson of economist Milton Friedman and bankrolled by libertarian figures such as Peter Thiel, whose own family reportedly managed a uranium mine in Namibia. Pronomos aims to create private, business-friendly charter cities like Praxis, often in developing countries where investors could write their own laws and regulations.

These “broligarchs” now have the ear of the president. Thiel has been a significant supporter of Trump, throwing millions of dollars behind him throughout his political career and introducing him to current Vice President J. D. Vance.

Most notable, in December, Trump announced Thiel’s partner Ken Howery as his Danish ambassador, making his intentions explicitly clear: “The United States of America feels that the ownership and control of Greenland is an absolute necessity,” he wrote on TruthSocial, his social media platform.

Greenland’s prime minister Múte Egede flatly rejected the idea, responding on Facebook, “Greenland is ours. We are not for sale and will never be for sale. We must not lose our long struggle for freedom.”

When the Price Is Too High

For centuries, the fight to control Greenland has revolved around its natural resources. The ice-gripped country has been part of Denmark since 1721 when a merchant-backed missionary expedition sought to spread Christianity to its Inuit population — and expand whaling and trade routes.

Greenland gained autonomy from Denmark in 1979, though the Danes continued to control its foreign relations and defense, allowing the United States to build and operate military bases there. In a 2008 referendum, Greenlanders voted for greater independence, allowing them to take control of their natural resources along with other state functions.

That same year, the US Geological Survey found the country had one of the world’s largest potential oil and gas reserves. More recent estimates suggest that the Arctic could hold 13 percent of the world’s undiscovered oil and 30 percent of its undiscovered natural gas. The report drew the attention of major oil companies like ConocoPhillips, Chevron, and BP, which began acquiring exploration licenses and conducting surveys around Greenland and its offshore areas.

But producing oil in such harsh conditions is difficult and expensive due to high transportation costs and infrastructure limitations. ExxonMobil, for example, withdrew its application in 2013, as a downward trend in oil prices made further development economically unfeasible.

When Siumut, a pro-independence political party, came into power earlier that year, leader Aleqa Hammond declared the country would instead transition to mineral extraction, saying, “If we want greater autonomy from Denmark, we have to finance it ourselves. This means finding new sources of income.” In 2014, the government announced a four-year national plan to create “new income and employment opportunities in the area of mineral resources activities.”

Because Greenland’s vast mineral deposits often contain uranium, however, the burgeoning mining industry quickly came into conflict with Denmark’s strict policy against extracting radioactive materials. Denmark chose not to develop nuclear energy in the 1980s, and has comparatively strict regulations around radiation protections.

One of the measures the Siumut-led government took in 2014 was proposing a bill that would have limited public access to environmental information and decision-making processes around mineral extraction. It also lowered environmental standards for uranium mining.

The bill failed to pass, but with Siumut’s support, an international project hoping to extract uranium and rare-earth metals gained preliminary approval. The Australian-based company Greenland Minerals (now called Energy Transition Minerals) found backing from Chinese Shenghe Resources Holdings, and brought Trump’s Greenland ambassador Carla Sands to the site for a visit in July 2019. The following month, Trump announced he wanted to buy the island, comparing it to “a large real estate deal.”

Sands, a former chiropractor and soap opera actress, now works for the America First Policy Institute, a conservative think tank concerned with strengthening the US mineral supply chains, among other nationalist issues.

Energy Transition Minerals’ proposed mine triggered massive controversy: concerns over the potential impact on critical fishing industries and food supplies ushered the Siumut party out of decades of power in 2021. “There is an ongoing, generational dialectic,” says Barry Zellen, a senior fellow of Arctic Security at the Institute of the North, between pro-development and pro-subsistence movements “that tends to swing pendularly.”

As the more left-leaning Inuit Ataqatigiit party took over, it quickly passed a law reinstating limits around uranium that revoked Energy Transition Minerals’ permits and banned all future oil and gas exploration.

“The price of oil extraction is too high,” the party wrote in a statement at the time. “This is based upon economic calculations, but considerations of the impact on climate and the environment also play a central role in the decision.”

These kinds of environmental protections are exactly what Trump aims to remove from American mining. On his own first day in office, one of Trump’s many executive orders directed government officials to remove “undue burdens” on the industry, so that the United States could become “the leading producer and processor of nonfuel minerals, including rare earth minerals.”

“I Went to Greenland to Try to Buy It”

The push for control of the arctic country comes as deep-pocketed investors like Andreessen have been drawn to start-ups hoping to build experimental enclaves, sold by the promise of freedom from the constraints of government.

Proposals for these cryptostates have sprung up in Honduras, Nigeria, the Marshall Islands, and Panama, the latter of which Trump has also recently proposed taking over by military force. While each concept looks a little different, often the sales pitch includes replacing taxes and regulations with cryptocurrency and blockchain.

For Praxis, these utopian dreams have led to Greenland, which is often incorrectly imagined as an unpopulated frontier. “I went to Greenland to try to buy it,” Praxis founder Dryden Brown posted on X in November, noting he first became interested in the island “when Trump offered to buy it in 2019.” Once in Nuuk, he learned that the country has long sought independence from Denmark and that many Greenlanders support sovereignty, though the country remains reliant on Denmark for financial support. It currently receives $500 million a year in Danish subsidies that account for 20 percent of the economy.

“They do not want to be ‘bought,’” Brown belatedly discovered, concluding, “There is an obvious opportunity here.” He proposed taxes from an independently run city like Praxis could help replace Danish subsidies.

Greenland, however, does not allow private property, an arrangement that historically has given communities a stronger voice in determining how or if its natural resources are developed — and could prove a problem for Brown’s planned utopia. But perhaps that could change under a new government.

On Monday, in response to a post referencing “Trump’s projects related to Greenland,” Praxis’s official X account — whose bio reads “We’re meant for more” below a version of the endeavor’s hallucinogenic flag — boasted about “A new post-state in the far North.”

The start-up “nation” has raised $525 million, though Brown, who dropped out of New York University and was fired from his last hedge fund job, hasn’t shared many specifics on Praxis’s website about his proposal for Greenland. (His previous efforts to build a city somewhere in the Mediterranean have also so far remained vague, beyond a branding guide that focused on “traditional, European/Western beauty standards” and recruiting tech employees with “hot girls.”)

But other tech tycoons’ plans for the island are more concrete.

“This Is About Critical Minerals”

Greenland is warming at a much faster rate than the rest of the planet, causing its glaciers to precipitously retreat. As the ice recedes, these valuable deposits are becoming more accessible. A 2023 European Commission survey revealed that Greenland has twenty-five out of thirty-four minerals classified as critical raw materials, or resources that are essential to the green energy transition but have a high risk of disrupted supply chains. The country boasts some of the world’s largest deposits of nickel and cobalt, and collectively, its mineral reserves almost equal those of the United States.

This wealth of resources has drawn the attention of companies like KoBold Metals, whose Silicon Valley backers have a vested interest in supplying materials for the tech industry.

KoBold has positioned itself as providing critical solutions for climate change, facilitating a global reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by supplying the materials needed for batteries and other renewable technologies. The company hailed President Joe Biden’s use of the Defense Production Act to encourage mining in 2022, along with the Inflation Reduction Act’s measures to subsidize international mining for rare earth minerals.

In Greenland, KoBold Metals’ exploration licenses focus on searching for nickel, copper, cobalt, and platinum-group minerals — materials important for green energy, but also for data centers’ rapid growth.

KoBold’s primary development so far has been developing a copper mine in Zambia, the largest such find in a century. Copper is used as a key material in the construction of data centers, and is crucial for artificial intelligence’s infrastructure. The AI boom is expected to nearly double the demand for copper by 2050. “We invested in KoBold,” OpenAI chief executive officer Sam Altman said, to “find new deposits.”

Its Zambia venture, too, has been part of a global power struggle, as the Biden administration backed the development of a railway to transport metals from the region to a port in Angola. The initiative was part of a broader US effort to counter China’s growing presence in Africa, offering investments as an alternative to its Belt and Road Initiative, a trade and infrastructure package.

KoBold’s top executive, however, likes to focus on lithium. “The growth [of lithium demand] is sort of staggering,” KoBold CEO Kurt House said in a 2023 presentation at Stanford. “It’s like a 30x increase in global production that you need.” One of the places the United States might turn to for this critical mineral is Greenland, where promising deposits were recently discovered.

“Everyone wants to have lithium” for its role in creating batteries, says Majken D. Poulsen, a geologist at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland. She explains the first exploration for lithium in Greenland was just conducted last summer in collaboration with the US State Department. Under Biden, the agency also helped the country draft a mining investment law, aimed at encouraging investment in Greenland.

Though quite different in tone, Trump’s Greenland bluster shares similar goals. Charlie Byrd, an investment manager at global assets management firm Cordiant Capital, is one of many investors now hoping the president’s gambit will result in policy changes that are more favorable to foreign investment. “There is no doubt that that would lead to bigger institutional involvement and more strategic investment,” he told trade publication Institutional Investor this week.

Much of this interest is driven by tensions with China, which currently accounts for around 70 percent of global rare-earth mining and 90 percent of its processing. This gives the Asian powerhouse enormous leverage over global tech supply chains.

Control over the minerals that power technology has become a major form of soft power, pulling invisible strings in global markets and shaping alliances. That makes mining regulations in Greenland a geopolitical chess move.

Today “regulations from the government of Greenland are quite high,” the Geological Survey’s Poulsen explains. “They have really strict regulations,” she says, including both environmental and social considerations, like “local benefits such as taxes, local workforce, local companies, [and] education.”

Michael Waltz, Trump’s incoming national security advisor, appeared to confirm that gaining access to the country’s minerals was driving Trump’s interest. “This is about critical minerals; this is about natural resources,” he told Fox News.

“You Can’t Put a Name on Land”

Glaciers loomed through Trump Force One’s cockpit window as Greenland’s coast unspooled behind a bobblehead of the forty-seventh president, his plastic bouffant bobbing in the turbulence. Dropping through the sharp, thin air, the plane delivered Donald Trump Jr to the island’s capital of Nuuk in early January with his father’s message: we intend to take over.

The tour de force — which included bribing people to participate in photo shoots — failed to win over many Greenlanders, says Inuuteq Kriegel, a Nuuk resident. “We don’t want to be Americans. We don’t want to be Danish. We’re Greenlanders,” he said.

A week after Trump Jr’s trip, Rep. Andy Ogles (R-TN) introduced the Make Greenland Great Again Act, instructing Congress to support Trump’s negotiations with Denmark to acquire Greenland immediately. (Ogles is currently the subject of an FBI probe around his campaign finance filings and last week announced an amendment that would allow Trump to run for a third term.)

“It might sound crazy, and one might ask, ‘Why would you want Greenland?’” Ogles said in a recent video. He was speaking with Kuno Fencker, a member of Greenland’s parliament representing the Siumut party, who had traveled to Washington, DC. “Your security interest is our security interest,” Ogles told Fencker. “Our ability to make best use of your minerals, your resources, and your riches — to benefit your people and ours — is in our best interest.”

Fencker, who says taxes and royalties from the island’s minerals and fossil fuels could pave the way for the island’s independence, responded, “We have other vast resources, like oil and gas, but that has been stopped by the current government. But my personal view is that we have to utilize those resources.”

Fencker’s US trip ignited local controversy. Typically Greenland’s international negotiations require coordination and approval from Denmark; imagine someone like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) single-handedly deciding to negotiate with the European Union without congressional approval. Fencker’s party said he was not authorized to discuss Greenland’s foreign affairs, while Fencker defended his travel as a private mission at his own expense.

The rogue nature of recent developments has been reinforced by bombastic press coverage. In Greenland, Kriegel says foreign reporters “often talk to the loud people — and often the same people — and they can generalize a whole population by speaking to only a few.” His own social networks are deeply uncomfortable with Trump’s attempts to purchase the country.

Trump and his tech donors’ eagerness to seize Greenland, existing culture and laws be damned, are “representative of a particular colonial and extractive worldview,” wrote Anne Merrild Hansen, professor of social science and arctic oil and gas studies at the University of Greenland. The approach treats land and resources as commodities to be claimed, regardless of the rights or interests of the people who live there.

All the unwelcome commotion, however, has succeeded in delivering one change: Kriegel says the country is now unified in wanting to find a path to independence from Denmark, even if there’s not yet agreement on how to do so.

“You can’t put a name on land,” he says. “Land belongs to the people. It’s a part of us, and we’re part of it.”Email

Lois Parshley

Lois Parshley is an award-winning investigative journalist. Her wide-ranging reporting has been published at the New Yorker, Harper’s, the New York Times, Businessweek, National Geographic, and more.