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White House tries to calculate cost of maintaining Greenland — newspaper

The US administration is also attempting to estimate what revenue to the federal budget could be gained from Greenland’s natural resources

WASHINGTON, April 2. /TASS/. The administration of US President Donald Trump is currently preparing to estimate the cost of maintaining Greenland as one of the US territories, The Washington Post wrote, citing sources.

The White House is trying to determine the financial implications of Greenland becoming a US territory, including the cost of providing government services for its 58,000 residents on the island, the paper wrote. It is also attempting to estimate what revenue to the federal budget could be gained from Greenland’s natural resources, but the forecasts are complicated by the territory’s harsh weather conditions and the island's inaccessibility. One option under analysis is to offer a more favorable deal to the Greenland authorities than to the Danish government, which currently funds services on the island at a rate of about $600 million every year, the newspaper noted.

Trump has repeatedly stated that Greenland should become part of the United States. He has threatened to impose high trade duties against Denmark if it does not relinquish the island. Back in 2019, during his first term as president, Trump said that the US could purchase Greenland. As then, officials from Greenland and Denmark dismissed the idea as absurd.

Greenland is an autonomous territory of Denmark. In 1951, Washington and Copenhagen signed the Greenland Defense Treaty in addition to their allied commitments to NATO, agreeing that the US will defend the island from external aggression.

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