US legal scholars convinced purchase of Greenland financially unfeasible

US President Donald Trump's idea of acquiring the island to bolster America's security framework is unrealistic alone due to the enormous costs involved.

The Bloomberg publication interviewed a law professor from the University of Virginia, Mitu Gulati, who ensured that the US Congress would never approve this plan.

According to Gulati, the US government would have to hypothetically offer each of Greenland’s 57,000 residents a payout worth $1 million and a so-called “golden card” in exchange for voting in favour of the Danish territory joining the US. The scholar estimates that this would result in several trillions of dollars in expenditures that would require the US government to either increase taxes or the national debt, the latter of which is already a sore point for the Trump administration.

"A simple purchase is simply impossible — if only for financial reasons," Gulati told the publication.

US President Trump remains steadfast in his desire to acquire the Northern American island, arguing only in March that America needs it "for national security and international security. So [...] we'll go as far as we have to go."

As Greenland is part of the Kingdom of Denmark, though it enjoys vast autonomy in internal matters, the government in Oslo has repeatedly rebutted Trump's ideas of annexing the island. Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen travelled to Greenland in the beginning of April, following the previous visits of several high-profile US representatives including Vice President J.D. Vance and Donald Trump Jr. She offered closer collaboration on security matters to Washington but repeated the Danish government's stance that the issue of Greenland was not up for debate.

Annexation has long been a part of US history, dating back to the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, when the US acquired a large swath of central North America from France.

The most recent instance of the US gaining new territory occurred in 1947, when it took control of three Pacific island groups under a United Nations-administered arrangement called the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands, established after World War II. That agreement required years of negotiations and cooperation among several nations to shape the post-war geopolitical order in Oceania, with only one of those islands, the Mariana Islands, remaining a US territory today.

By Nazrin Sadigova