Trump covets Panama Canal, Greenland, won’t rule out force to take them, stays mum about domestic issues

I notice that President-elect Trump seems to be talking more these days about acquiring territory (Greenland, Canada, the Panama Canal) than about how he plans to address some of the biggest issues of his campaign.

Those issues (inflation, undocumented workers, tariffs) are fundamentally economic – and they put him in the White House. As that seasoned old political guru James Carville put it, the reason Trump won was because “it was about the economy, stupid.” 

Given all that, I’m wondering why on earth Trump has spent the last days of his pre-presidency ignoring economic issues and talking about turning Greenland into an American territory, making Canada our 51st state, and acquiring the Panama Canal? 

I’m beginning to think that it’s a way of avoiding any discussion about how he intends to follow through on his campaign promises. Why the lack of lip service to the winning economic issues of the campaign? Because Trump’s team knows that those promises are flawed by their disconnection from reality. They’re empty. They won’t work. At some point, Trump and his supporters have to face facts. It’s becoming clear enough that his intentions to impose tariffs and mass deportations are at cross purposes with his plans, if he even has any, to bring down inflation. 

Sixteen Nobel Prize-winning economists said as much last summer. Then a few days ago, the Federal Reserve Board made clear its reservations about the chances of inflation coming down. Quoted by Reuters, the Fed concluded at its December meeting “that recent higher-than-expected readings on inflation, and the effects of potential changes in trade and immigration policy, suggest that the process could take longer than previously anticipated."

Based on all the media time being consumed by Trump’s quasi-imperial obsession to expand American territory, talking tough about acquiring new land has been an effective way of avoiding serious discussions concerning plans to fulfill campaign commitments.

More creepily for me, there’s some deja vu coming into play here. I sure don’t like the pieces of a picture that seems to be congealing, mainly because I’ve seen this movie before.

Consider that our congressional rep Dusty Johnson just filed a bill that would authorize the president to begin negotiations for the re-acquisition of the Panama Canal. He’s claiming that it’s time to take aim at China’s “growing influence” in the region. Last night during a report on Rapid City’s KOTA News, I heard Johnson refer to China as “an enemy of the United States,” which is completely ridiculous considering China’s status as a major trading partner. South Dakota alone shipped $150 million worth of agricultural products to China in 2023.

Bringing it closer to home, Chinese-owned Smithfield Foods has a packing plant in Johnson’s back yard, Sioux Falls, that has 4,000 workers on the payroll.

Some enemy.

The Trump administration calling ownership and control of Greenland “an absolute necessity” is consistent with the sense of urgency that Johnson and other Trump supporters are trying to create. If you remember the rhetoric of the cold war, you’ll get what I mean by deja vu. This is the tone and the kind of language that defined the political environment of my youth.

And it worked. About 75% of American troops that served in Vietnam — a war to fend off, in LBJ’s words, “the deepening shadow of communist China” — were volunteers, like me. I was lucky to survive that horror show for thirteen months. Unsurprisingly, I’ve been cynical about political motives ever since. That’s why I’m wary of Dusty Johnson’s warnings about China’s “growing influence” and his glib reference to the country as an “enemy.” I hear an echo from the past and it has some somber overtones.

As to Trump, that he won’t rule out the use of force as a means of gaining territory gives me the shivers. Talking heads on the news networks generally regard the sabre-rattling remarks to be a negotiating ploy. They might be right, but the fact is that Trump has just ratcheted up the rhetoric and adopted an aggressive tone. This is how escalation starts.

We need another cold war like we need a collective hole in the head.

John Tsitrian is a businessman and writer from the Black Hills. He was a weekly columnist for the Rapid City Journal for 20 years. His articles and commentary have also appeared in The Los Angeles Times, The Denver Post and The Omaha World-Herald. Tsitrian served in the Marines for three years (1966-69), including a 13-month tour of duty as a radioman in Vietnam. Republish with permission.

Photo: Chinese company ship in Panama Canal, public domain, wikimedia commons