Last week, President Donald Trump announced that he had established a framework surrounding a deal over Greenland’s future, one that guarantees the U.S. will be “involved” in the island’s mineral rights. But despite easing tensions with NATO countries after months of increasingly hostile rhetoric over ownership of the Denmark-administered territory, Trump’s shrinking pool of friends in Europe could foil his plan to extract the valuable minerals hidden under the ice.
That’s one of three crucial obstacles the U.S. would likely have to overcome to gain access to Greenland’s resource wealth, according to Wood Mackenzie, an energy and mining research firm. Greenland ranks eighth in the world for rare earth reserves, essential materials to developing advanced electronics, electric cars and high-performance magnets. That wealth has made it a tantalizing target for a U.S. administration eager to diversify supply chains away from China, which is currently the dominant supplier behind several key minerals and controls the lion’s share of global processing capacity.
