President Donald Trump has made repeated overtures to annex Greenland, despite the overwhelming opposition both within that Danish territory and throughout the rest of the European Union (EU). Now one economist is reporting that the EU may be causing long-term damage to the American economy by moving its gold out of this country — and as a direct result of the United States' actions toward Greenland.
"They've done this because they're worried about what Donald Trump might do to use this against them," economist Catherine Rampell told The Bulwark's Tim Miller on Wednesday. "Now, I don't think he's, like, actually likely to tunnel underground a la Die Hard with a Vengeance and, like, literally steal the gold in dump trucks. But you don't know."
She added, "Like, he did talk about how he wanted to show up at Fort Knox and knock on the door to make sure the gold was still there in case somebody else had stolen it. He literally said that, I think, multiple times. So maybe he would do that. The more likely outcome is that he would basically say we're going to treat the EU, our friends in the European Union, the same way that we're treating Russia. And we're going to say they no longer have access to this."
Rampell continued, "We've frozen Russia's foreign exchange reserves, for example. They might well do the same thing. And by the way, Germany is considering this as well, taking the role back. And Germany had gold here partly because of Cold War reasons. Like it wasn't fleeing the Nazis. It was like making sure that the Soviets couldn't get their mitts on it. In any event, what they're worried about is like, look, there's the whole Liberace stuff within the White House."
The economist concluded, "Maybe we'll have a shortage. I don't think it's actually that. It's like they're freaked out about the invasion of Greenland or the threatened invasion of Greenland. That was a much bigger deal in Europe than American media coverage let on. Like they were totally freaked out about that. They're like, well, if he's threatening to invade a NATO ally, why wouldn't he just expropriate our assets? He talks all the time about how he wants to take the oil or in the case of Venezuela has taken the oil and not just oil, of course."
Miller then pointed out, "Gold? They said they took the gold in Venezuela." Rampell confirmed that this is indeed the case.
Speaking with AlterNet earlier in September, Dr. Richard D. Wolff — professor emeritus of economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst – broke down exactly why Europe, Canada and other nations threatened by the United States are acting like this.
"I am not surprised that our government is surprised," Wolff wrote. "Our government is busy strong-arming people around the world in every way that it can, militarily, economically, politically, and discovering time after time to their amazement, if you take them seriously, that the folks are going to resist. And that's what's going to happen."
Europe has already vowed to defend Greenland from American aggression.
“We are ready to defend every inch of NATO, including our own territory,” Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen told reporters at a NATO summit over the summer. “One of the reasons why we built NATO many, many years ago is if anything happens to one of us then everybody should stand up for each other.”
During that same summit, Icelandic premier Kristrún Frostadóttir declared that “the lines in the sand are clear: Greenland belongs to the people of Greenland."
