President-elect Donald Trump is showing no sign of letting up in his desire for the US to acquire Greenland and the Panama Canal, calling both critical to American national security, the BBC reports.
Asked if he would rule out using military or economic force in order to take over the autonomous Danish territory or the Canal, he responded: “No, I can’t assure you on either of those two.
“But I can say this, we need them for economic security,” he told reporters during a wide-ranging news conference at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.
Both Denmark and Panama have rejected any suggestion that they would give up territory.
Trump also vowed to use “economic force” when asked if he would attempt to annex Canada and called their shared border an “artificially drawn line”.
The boundary is the world’s longest between two countries and it was established in treaties dating back to the founding of the US in the late 1700s.
The president-elect said the US spends billions of dollars protecting Canada, and he criticised imports of Canadian cars, lumber and dairy products.
“They should be a state,” he told reporters.
But outgoing Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said there isn’t “a snowball’s chance in hell” of the two countries merging.
