The start of this year’s World Economic Forum in the Swiss ski resort of Davos has been overshadowed by the president’s increasingly aggressive stance on the arctic territory, with many political and business leaders alarmed about the potential geopolitical and economic impact. Trump is due to address delegates at the gathering on Wednesday.
While Cohn expressed reservations about some of the president’s actions, he said the US administration had “various different motives” for what they were doing.
He said Trump’s decision to intervene in Venezuela was “a path” to disrupt the country’s relationship with China, the biggest market for its oil, as well as Russia and Cuba.
Cohn also thinks that the president has become increasingly focused on the importance of rare earth minerals, noting that “Greenland has quite a supply” of the resources.
Those minerals are critical to the development of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and quantum computing – also a major talking point in Davos.
US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Monday hit back at claims Trump has blamed his escalating threats over Greenland on the fact he was not awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
In a message to Norway’s Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre, Trump blamed the country for not giving him the prize and said he no longer feels obliged to think only of peace.
Bessent said: “I don’t know anything about the president’s letter to Norway, and I think it’s complete canard that the President will be doing this because of the Nobel Prize.
“The president is looking at Greenland as a strategic asset for the United States. We are not going to outsource our hemispheric security to anyone else.”