Why Trump Wants to Buy Greenland: Hidden Resources, Military Power & Global Strategy

Hello and welcome back to the Market Maker podcast, and we are going to dive straight into one of the biggest topics at the moment. Why on earth is Trump so desperate to acquire Greenland? And literally, if you watch this on video, you can see there's a TV behind my head there. He's just about to come on because he has arrived in Switzerland to meet with world leaders at a summit in Davos. So eagerly anticipated, but it all comes after Trump has said he would add a 10% tariff to goods imported from 8 European countries that oppose his plan to take over Greenland. But what I wanted to do was, while I think everyone is a little bit guilty of just sitting there receiving this news going, oh, it's Trump again, or yes, I guess Greenland must have some sort of natural resource. That's probably why he's doing it. Just wanted to actually get under the skin of it. And what is all the fuss? With Greenland specifically. And this is a pretty fascinating story actually about defense strategy, resource competition, and a desire, of course, for the president to cement his legacy in history. That small thing as well. In this conversation, we're not trying to be political. We're not trying to be maritime or defense experts. I know it's tempting. Everyone on LinkedIn appears to be that way. All we are are a couple of guys who want to talk about this subject and actually, rather than just report the news, actually understand what is the strategy behind what is happening and why it's happening. So yeah, I've got, as ever, with me, the real brains, Piers Curran, to unpack some of this. Yeah. Fair statement?

Well, I'll try and unpack it. I'm not sure about the real Did you say real brains?

All right. Well, you were trying to tell me you were the real, the real beauty just before we came on.

So I was, we were watching, uh, well, you sent me a link, someone on Instagram talking about, we'll go into it, but the GI UK gap. Um, she was talking about it anyway. Yeah. That's kind of how I got my intel on that. But, um, it was a good account. Am I, am I? I might follow that one.

I'll leave the listeners to do their own searching and research. But yeah, to start with then, we can talk a little bit about why Greenland. We'll talk a little about a couple of different things. National security. We'll talk about economic sovereignty, rare earths, which in itself is kind of like a bit of an enigma to most people and what that actually is, but also its critical significance to the world economy as it stands and the future of technology, which I'm sure you're going to explain. But let's start with national security and this thing called the Golden Dome. And what that is, is not a prelude to a new James Bond movie, but an expansive missile defense shield intended to protect, protect the entire North American continent. So, couple of things. For one, As unlikely as a possibility it might seem, but from a location perspective, Greenland sits directly on the shortest flight path for missiles or bombers traveling from Russia to the US East Coast. And you know, that missile kind of activity actually happening is one thing, but you'll remember a few years ago in Trump's first term, it was similar with the North Koreans talking about missile technology that they could fire. And that was when Alaska was a big thing. So that, that's one, it's strategic location. The other thing here then is about the US wanting complete and total control to update and upgrade its early warning systems and space surveillance without being restricted. Obviously at the moment, the Greenland regulators and the Danish side are heavily involved. It's theirs at this point, which will We'll go into explain how that all works. But this is a really key thing because if you actually want to increase defense and that is your sole objective, well then you need to be able to implement things, you know, without your hands being cuffed. So that's another thing. And then there's this thing called, you mentioned it just now, the GIUK or the GIUK gap, which I never, never heard of, to be honest. But what I did do is I did go on Google Maps and actually I was really surprised to see, just when you never really look at the northern part of the global map, your eyes are always drawn to go kind of lateral, kind of west to east, for example. But actually didn't realize the UK and that the tip of, and then Greenland, and then where it all sits and comes together was so intimately tied as a key area geographically. But yeah, perhaps you could explain a little bit what that is.

Yeah, I mean, it's, so the interesting thing, if you are a kind of World War historian, then you certainly will know about this kind of strait of water. It's basically the water. Yeah. If you draw a line from basically the northwest coast of the UK through Iceland, you know, you're going to hit Greenland and it's, so it's actually is actually the two passages of water between Iceland and the UK, and then Iceland and Greenland on the other side. And this is historically very important. This is where the German U-boats came through into the North Atlantic in World War I, which was hugely kind of, you know, a bit of a strategic coup by the Germans back then. That's why in World War II, it was a real, like, one of the first objectives when the US came into the war was actually to secure that that the Gjørgjá, and that's why there's US military bases and a presence on that sort of, let's call it the southeast coast of Greenland, for example. So look, historically there's a lot of importance to it. I think in more kind of modern times, you actually get a lot of cabling coming through there for the transferring of information across to the east coast of America. So look, it's, It's about the East Coast. 'Cause I was, I was, I can't remember, there was a comedian in the US, can't remember who it was now, and I was just watching a clip. I think it was just on TikTok and he was kind of ridiculing Trump 'cause Trump was going, look, it's very strategic. We need Greenland because we gotta block the Russians. And then he brought up a map and of course the Russia, Russia's super close to Alaska. If you go to the exact opposite side, right? Russia's You know, there's, I can't remember what the strait of water is between the east Russia and, and the kind of west coast of Alaska and like they're right there. And so it's like, well, you know, why do we need Greenland? Actually, we should be focusing on that side where they're much closer kind of thing. But that's, you know, that's more about the west coast of the US and, and fine, that does need protecting. But from an east coast perspective, you know, I think this Greenland situation and particularly, you know, owning that strait and preventing, let's say an adversary that might be Russia, you know, pouring in through there. It's a very important thing. So yeah, from a military perspective, controlling that piece of water, the gap, is absolutely essential.

Yeah. And the other thing that I saw that lady online was talking about was about the advancement of the submarine technology, i.e., the ability to detect now is becoming increasingly more difficult. And so hence again, the reason why you'd want to upgrade those early warning those early warning systems.

Yeah, it's, I mean, it's so interesting. They, like in World War II, they kind of, the, the US kind of developed these sensors that are kind of sat on the ocean bed floor essentially that would detect the motion of these U-boats coming through that. So that's how they detected them coming through. But now of course, Russia have developed next gen, next gen, next gen. And so, and, and part of the development and evolution of those U-boats is actually to avoid avoid being detected in that way. So yeah, just a really interesting history behind that.

Okay, well, so the next big component then, probably the one that most people are drawn to, is this idea of rare earth minerals, but also how that is tied to economic sovereignty and independence. So one of the words here is talking about these rare earth minerals.

Yes.

I think people kind of, I'm guessing most people who listen to us went to school and sat in their science lessons. I think my 7-year-old daughter is currently drawing pictures of Earth and its crusts and so forth. But perhaps you could break that down and connect what are we talking about? And I'm actually very interested to see how close you can get to pronouncing some of these names.

Well, this is the challenge. I was hoping you like, what, what, like when you hear rare earths, what's the first one that comes to mind in your head?

Lithium.

Perfect. I was hoping you were going to say that. I did not tee you up to say that at all, did I? That's not a rare earth. Ah, and yet like half of the planet, I think, believe lithium is like the number one rare earth. It's not even a rare earth. In fact, it's In many ways it's the opposite. Here's a fun fact about lithium. It's kind of an alkali metal, right? And if you're, I mean, I did Chemistry A Level about a million years ago, so I was kind of into my periodic table a little bit back then in my youth, but it's the lightest metal on Earth and actually it floats on water. It's so light as a metal. Anyway, side show there, but it's not one of the 17 rare earths and in fact, Lithium's very light. All the rare earths, the 17 of them, they all sit— you often hear them referred to as the lanthanides on the periodic table. They sit at the bottom of the periodic table, meaning they're super heavy. So lithium's super light. I mean, yes, lithium is essential as a component in batteries and fine, rare earths are used in batteries and magnets and stuff. We'll come onto it in a second. But that's the classic sort of misconception. People think lithium is a rare earth. It's not. So anyway, they sit at the bottom of the periodic table. And yeah, I mean the thing at the moment from a kind of Trump perspective is that ultimately, you know, these rare earths have become, you know, the modern day sort of oil, if you like. And that's because they're now essential in a few different sort of applications. Number one being AI data centers. And so you've got, I'm going to try and pronounce some now, but you've got things like Godalinium, which I've completely butchered. And then cerium.

Can we get it again? Can I get a rewind, please?

Godalinium. If I say it slower, I might nail it. Godalinium. Yeah.

Say it like you're pretending to be Trump and you'll nail it there.

Gadolinium. And then you've got cerium. Okay. These are high purity. These are for high purity silicon wafers, right? So solid state memory used in AI data centers. So it's obviously an absolute critical sort of thing with this whole AI race that's going on globally, right? You've then got others. One, so here's another one, neodymium, and then you've got prasoidium, which again, I've just destroyed. They are very essential for the high-strength permanent magnets you get in your electric vehicles, for example. Also batteries on offshore wind turbines. And then kind of thirdly, I mean, obviously there's loads of applications for these things, but the big three of importance are AI, race, EV batteries, and then the other one is defense, right? So a lot of these are used in like, I don't know, F-35 sensors, submarine sonar sensors, and all that kind of stuff, right? So it's super critical as a kind of commodity in this day and age, right? The problem is from Trump's perspective, China is just bossing the market in rare earths. And actually in this whole kind of trade war sort of episode in Trump 2.0 over the last few years, that's been China's ace card. That's the, that's the pretty much the one single leverage that Xi Jinping has over Trump. Now in 2026, China controls roughly 70% of global mining of rare earths and maybe even more importantly, 90% of the refining capacity. 'Cause this is the thing, right? Rare earths. The, the thing is everyone's got rare earths. In the— it's actually not that rare. I mean, this is again, a bit of a misconception with regards to the name. It's not rare, it's everywhere. It's in the Earth's crust. What is rare is finding a patch of rare earth that's concentrated enough that then it becomes sort of almost economically viable to kind of mine that area and start extracting it. One issue that's been holding people back, it's not environmentally friendly. This mining process. But look, China have been cracking on with it big time, obviously subsidized by the government. And then they've built up this huge refining capacity because you can't just pull it out of the ground and then shove it in your EV battery. Obviously this stuff needs refining. It's a huge process. Okay. And China have got 90% of the world's infrastructure. So like the US do mine rare earths, but right now almost all of it they're having to send to China to get refined and then get it sent back. So you've obviously, you can see how unbelievably critical this is and just the power and like China are kind of weaponizing this power in this kind of Trump era of tariffs, right? The power is huge. So this is Greenland happens to have lots of kind of resources, one of which is Well, a huge amount of rare earths. And so clearly for Trump, in, in, in my opinion, you know, it's almost like they've been calling it the kind of final frontier of reserves. That is in terms of Greenland. So they hold 25 of the 34 minerals. Obviously some of those are rare earths. There's only 17 rare earths in total, but they hold 25 of 34 minerals that the EU and the US have classified as critical. So there's sites in Greenland. Time for me to massacre a couple of more pronunciations here. So I'm, these are places in Greenland. So one's called Tanbrees, which isn't too bad. The other one's Kvanfeld. I think I nailed that actually. So those two places are estimated to hold millions of tons of rare earths. Okay. So, you know, this is, and here's an important kind of phrase from Trump's mind. This is a domestic adjacent supply, right? So you've got a supply adjacent to your domestic country. And so obviously in my mind, forget everything else, fine, the defense strategic nature of Greenland, obviously that's definitely important, but in my mind, rare earths, baby.

As you were kind of saying with China, it feels like the direction of travel where war is fought through technology. You need to shore up that supply chain from the oil coming out of the ground to the actual constructor refining and the construction then of actually making the equipment as well as then having the top layer, which is all the software side and the frontier labs doing the actual, you know, the OpenAIs and the US infrastructure build out and so forth. Makes, makes a lot of sense. But yeah, one of the other things here is even beyond just what sounds like already a pretty compelling case behind why he is doing what he's doing, there are some other factors as well. One was, I saw that the US Geological Survey, the USGS, they're called, has estimated that the waters off northeast Greenland could hold as much as 31 million barrels of oil equivalent. This will be fresh in a lot of people's minds because of the intervention we've seen in Venezuela of late. But one of the things I thought was, okay, 31 billion barrels of oil sounds like a lot, but what is actually a lot in the world of oil? Because I don't think a lot of people actually know, but that type of level of reserve would put them in the top 12 to 15 in the global rankings.

Yeah.

Which is amazing when you think about, you know, just the name and the country Greenland, you would never think of that. 'Cause you think oil, you definitely think the Persian Gulf and so on. But, you know, Greenland's reserves would put them up over and above Qatar, for example, within that region, but also above China.

Yeah.

To that extent. So that's on the oil side. Then you've got fresh water and hydropower. Which are, look, you know, this is a bit of a future play, let's say.

Yeah.

But you know, global warming, global water scarcity, things like that. Greenland's ice sheet is increasingly viewed as, you know, a potential commodity with value, I'd say in the future. And the estimations are that the untapped hydropower potential, if it was to be unlocked, Could be nearly 4 times the total hydropower output of the UK in its entirety. And the US hydropower equivalent would be roughly about 7% of all of the US. I mean, that's, I mean, a huge geographic area when you think about it to the size of Greenland. So hugely large in that sense. And so between all of this, some of the numbers, and I mean, this is a wide range, this bid offer spread. Is outrageous. But the research said that the potential resource value here, put it all together, we're talking $2 to $4 trillion is on the table here.

That is a widespread, as you said. Yeah, look, I, the other point to make here though is, you know, it's not like, ah, if Trump can buy Greenland, then right, there's your $2 to $4 trillion worth of resource immediately on tap and available. The big problem is the chronic lack of infrastructure in Greenland. And so again, a bit like Venezuela, as you, you know, everyone's been reading about in recent weeks with regards to their oil reserves and the fact, yeah, fine, they're huge, but it's going to take a lot of cash to build the infrastructure to then be able to tap that. So yeah, obviously it's a, multi-decade play. But that power thing, I mean, at the moment, one of the key, again, advantages China have in the AI race is their power, their capacity to produce electricity. You know, they're putting up, I think they're standing up something like 100 nuclear plants, you know, in the next 12 months. You know, it takes the US 10 years to get one plant built because of all the regulatory red tape you've got to go through for that. So at the moment, China are just absolutely destroying America with this kind of trajectory of being able to up their power. So, you know, getting power from absolutely anywhere and anything. I mean, that's why I think Ludnick, who's in Davos, was mouthing off earlier, I think earlier today about, you know, coal's the most important energy source. And like obviously stepping into Davos amongst the European leaders who obviously favor a green agenda. And here's Ludnik going, no, no, you want to use coal. And they're all, what? Who the hell's this guy? His kind of point is they just need all the energy forms they could get, you know, and Greenland obviously presents another sort of avenue for increasing their sort of power capacity, I would say.

How about then we, we talk about it's got this idea that Greenland is for sale, you know, just to start with. And yeah, this has raised lots of, you know, kind of split the divide on the political spectrum. We won't talk about it from that perspective.

Yeah.

But how does that work? Like, you know, who pays off who here to get access to that extent?

Well, it's, this is really interesting, right? Because obviously, the media will, you know, and rightly are focusing on the Trump part of the situation here. And, and look, Trump's being Trump, right? And grabbing all the headlines. But obviously Denmark are a part of this equation. And so right now it's really interesting actually, 'cause at the moment, um, there's something called the Block Grant. This is what Denmark pay Greenland every year. Um, and this is actually the crux of their relationship. So this is an unconditional cash transfer from the Danish government to Greenland's government on an annual basis. In 2026, that value of the grant for this year is $600 million USD, right? Now, what's the purpose of this money? Well, it actually funds like essential machinery of like Greenlandic life in a way, right? It pays for things like their free healthcare system. Which by the way is like top of the list of things that Greenlanders are most worried about in terms of this whole situation. Right now they have an awesome free healthcare system based on a European healthcare system that basically Denmark pay for. They pay for all their schools, they pay for social services, they pay for infrastructure. Okay. And actually, how much is $600 million? Well, if you say to Trump, if you ask Trump, he says it's absolutely nothing. We'll just write a check.

Here you go.

It's actually 20% of Greenland's GDP, right? So that's how much money that is to the Greenlanders. It's 20% of their GDP right now. There's a really interesting— so that happens every year. Okay. Now there's a really interesting clause in this deal between Denmark and Greenland. It's called the mining clause, and there's a 50/50 rule. So basically, And this was kind of set in place in the 2009 Self-Government Act. Okay. And there was a built-in independence trigger. So Greenland built this in, in this act they put into place in 2009. And basically it says that if Greenland starts making money from mining, and obviously they've got a lot of resources, but they can't afford the infrastructure to tap it, right? But if they get to the point where they really start to up their mining, right? So mining rare earths and so on. If the block grant is reduced by 50% of those mining revenues. So as the mining revenues increase, 50% of the value of the mining revenues gets minused from the block grant payment with the whole point that Greenland moved towards being self-sufficient. Are no longer dependent on the Danes' annual check, right? So Greenland set this in motion in 2009, their pathway to independence by tapping their mining resources, taking themselves off this Danish reliance. So that's where we're at, right?

So it sounds like we need some investment bankers then to sort of model out this $600 million run rate over years. Wow. What does the actual, what does it come out as an end value then for Trump?

Well, yeah, I mean, this is it. I mean, well, so I mean, obviously if you do the maths, the mining revenues have to reach $1.2 billion for then 50% of that is $600 million for then that Danish grant to be no longer there. Okay. So Trump's offer, right? This is where the Trump's buying Greenland comes from. Trump's offer is to just replace the Danish check. Trump's saying, don't take the Danish money anymore. Take my money. I'll pay the $600 million every year. Now, one of the issues that the Greenlanders have is they're worried because look, one of the US healthcare system is not the envy of the world, right? Quite the opposite. And so Greenland are like, well, hang on, I don't really want to swap my free amazing kind of European healthcare system for a US system, which is going to cause us problems. So that's one of the key issues for the, in the Greenlanders' mind here, but essentially it is up to Greenland. It's completely in their power. If they wanted to take the US money rather than the Danish money, they could, you know?

But surely this isn't like a, a like for like. So Trump covers the check with $600 million, but then what? He's left with an island in terms of, okay, we've just discussed about all the wonderful stuff under the ground in Greenland, but that doesn't just spring out of the ground into the air.

Yeah. So he basically, Trump's saying, look, we'll pay the money instead, but in return, obviously Trump's gotta do a deal. In return, they'll get defense so that they'll, they'll provide Greenland with defense. And obviously the US defense is a much bigger tool than the Danish defense, to say the obvious. But then in exchange, the US gets exclusive rights to all mining And military bases. So obviously that's the big one. And that's it. That's how he's trying to buy Greenland. And technically Greenland could accept. There is no, there is no thing here that the Danes have some kind of, you know, birthright to that land, as it were.

Surely Europe would pull some levers though around Denmark's relationship with the rest of the euro area. If they start making any noises about moving toward the US in this regard.

Yeah. But then, you know, this is where Trump comes out and tariffs anybody in Europe who's sticking their oar in where he feels it's not needed.

Okay. So it's starting to make sense now.

Like, so, 10 to 25% tariffs that he slapped on Denmark.

Yeah.

And now the 10% tariff he's threatening for 8 other European countries who are rallying behind Denmark in their defense and kind of crying foul.

One other way as well, which I guess the administration in the US could fill the void of some sort of money outlay, let's say, it's not just on the geopolitical side where, you know, one of the things I was reading is about the acceleration in melt of Arctic ice, which is actually fundamentally changing shipping lanes.

Yeah.

Like in the Northwest Passage that are becoming more viable over for longer periods of time because the Earth's getting warmer essentially. So if you just think of it purely as like more space for trade and travel. So aside from geopolitical buffer, which is obviously aiming the US to prevent Russia and China from escalating dominance in the Arctic, the other thing is about, well, let's just say this Northwest Passage then becomes a year-round reality. Couldn't you just have the toll roads almost. And it's like, okay, if this actually becomes a genuine thing, then, and we can control that, wouldn't that in itself be a decent revenue stream? And I think what I was reading is some estimations and they were talking about an estimation of worth tens of billions in annual toll and logistics revenues. So tens of billions by 2030. So there's no way you could get access to a lot of these, the rare earths you mentioned, the oil, there's no way you could flip that in 3 to 4 years.

No.

But you could start making tens of billions at least on some of these toll and logistical charges.

Yeah. I guess the Suez Canal of the North. Right.

Yeah. In summary. Yeah. Okay. Well, look, I thought, so this kind of answers part one. So we've kind of addressed like why why Greenland? But the other part of this then I thought, okay, so there's always this kind of political angle, which then kind of cements the rationale. So there's a lot of ideas we've talked about so far, and there's kind of four points of this. One, of course, is about the midterms. Yeah, always. And we talked about this on a previous episode with Venezuela, but it's kind of similar. Tactic here as an umbrella theme, which is the administration using Greenland as the ultimate America First proof of life, if you like. Yeah. And this kind of projection of, you know, a lot of people, I know Ray Dalio's a big fan of the pod. I know he listens, but sorry, Ray. I know you talk a lot about this kind of shifting of global powers over centuries, and there's a lot of talk about the eventual decline of America and so on. But here's Trump trying to engineer the optics about this unstoppable global force. They're back to America first, America best in terms of signals to voters at an absolute opportune time, of course, that the US is returning to global dominance. Then the other thing, of course, when you think about voters and what's key to voters is jobs. Jobs, income, their way of life, ability to spend, these sorts of things. And so this connection between the Golden Dome we talked about before and then jobs, and by linking Greenland to the $700 billion Golden Dome missile shield, they're talking about defense contracts and those defense contracts, obviously, if the US can have ownership, will go to US firms. And obviously then you start thinking, okay, so where do these defense military operations reside. And of course they tend to reside in key manufacturing states where defense jobs are a primary economic driver of employment and prosperity and wealth. So that was kind of one is the timing. The other thing here is the kind of, my notes were sort of saying a tariff shakedown as a campaign tool. And this is what you were talking about because just to clarify, he's talking about 10% tariffs to begin literally like in a few days' time. Yeah. And they're going to rise to 25% by June, which is a pretty calculated risk here because tactically by settling the escalation for June, he's creating this window and this is the art of the deal strategy all over again. It's the, the threaten shock, bring them to the table. You put out this escalation roadmap only then to negotiate over the residing period of the next 3 months or so till we get to June and some sort of deal happens. This all happens just as the peak of the primary season ends and the general election cycle begins. So a lot of this is about tactical timing. In order for him to be able to get this in just in the nick of time to have the greatest influence on those people that could really shape the composition on Congress. And then of course there's Trump. He obviously was not happy about the Nobel Prize. Does he have one? I'm not, he kind of has one now.

Well, he got given it, didn't he? Exactly. Yeah.

But obviously he would love to go down. I mean, imagine if this went through, and they did get control because as you said, he's not going to see a lot of the fruits of this deal, but history will, because this is a tipping point with AI and technology now where we're on a whole new dimension, but perhaps for human civilization to put it. I know, but it feels like with this latest advancements that we're seeing, this is a meaningful shift. For human history. And if he is the one then that actually was able to put into play what would be a 100-year timeline to really see all of this come to fruition, could well see the US just hang on. So that would be some legacy notch on the belt, so to speak. And then the final thing connected to the preempting China aside, the other thing was about the hedging against the blue wave. And this again goes back to the political side of things, which was about The president moving pretty fast because now he can and he must.

Yeah.

Because he still has a fairly cooperative Republican majority in the Senate. Could well change.

Yeah.

And then the whole thing becomes a bit of a lame duck, you know, kind of situation where a lot gets said, not a lot gets done. So, you know, while—

It's a good point. It's a very good point that because he's got till November. Basically. So that the pace of, yeah, his kind of policy efforts, this, it's just accelerating like to crazy breakneck speed. And that's, you're right, he's got that finish line in November. 'Cause if they lose the House, then yeah, they no longer have that kind of clean ownership of the House and the Senate. So from a legislative point of view, you know, it just becomes more difficult to do stuff. And so yeah, the kind of the clock, the shot clock is on.

And the way that he can exert pressure here politically is by making Greenland a national security necessity.

Right.

He forces his opponents, they either need to one, accept his expansionist agenda or two, he will just quite, as he has done many times before, he'll turn around and go, look, you are just a weak hand at the rudder. You cannot control or contain Russia or the Chinese advancement. And all of that messaging will be absolutely at the forefront going into the midterm. So you either gotta back it or he uses it as leverage against you. Either way, he's got a pretty strong hand, you could say.

This is it. It's a nightmare for the Europeans here. I mean, how do you kind of strategize to kind of get to get the response right. I mean, I would not want to be a European leader here trying to deal with this.

There's one more headache for the European leaders.

Go on.

That headache is European corporates.

Yeah.

Because one of the things I was reading is that all of this we've talked about is the ratchet up from 10% to 25% tariffs on Europe is in June. So we've talked about it from a US perspective, why that's an important timeline. June is when many European companies finalize their Q3, Q4 supply chain budgets. A 25% tariff. And you think, you think about what does Europe produce? And then you think of the engine of Europe, Germany. They're an auto manufacturer export. BMW, Mercedes. And then you think of French luxury giants, one of the largest companies right nowadays, LVMH. This could cause an absolute corporate revolt against the European politicians if something doesn't get resolved.

So yeah, absolutely. I mean, those stocks, LVMH, Airbus, BMW, Novo Nordisk, all down 4% yesterday as this thing really escalated over the weekend.

That's so funny. I don't think you can hear it, but there's an alarm going off in the office. Trump's on TV. It feels like code red. There's a situation in the, in the Jiyuk. We need to evacuate. Couldn't make it up. I don't know if you can hear the alarm going off there. Hopefully I could keep, keep my composure. But, um, all right. So any other points to add or should I just kind of wrap up the general?

I think wrap. I think we've covered it. There's so much going on.

Yeah.

But yeah, it's interesting to kind of get under the, the kind of top surface of the media, kind of media around Trump and actually just kind of delve in and properly just educate yourself on exactly what's going on here, you know, before starting to kind of make judgements.

Yeah. So the key things here were a kind of three-pronged strategic play around this idea of the shield, the Golden Dome missile system, the full control of Greenland seen as a non-negotiable cornerstone of that ultimate goal for strategic defence. Then the vault, i.e., the resource grab.

Yes.

This goes to historic proportions if it could be realized in such a way. And then the, this kind of shakedown idea about the political timing, the Feb 1st tariffs looming on 8 European allies and Trump using this negotiation, as you said, shock clock kind of strategy and then escalation right at the peak of the midterm primaries. As ever. Very strategic timing for the art of the deal from the main man. But yeah, we'll wrap it up there. Hopefully that was useful. As Piers said, any questions, comments, things you'd like to add, things we've missed, I'm sure there's many. Please let us know in the comments and we will see you next week. All right. Cheers, Piers.

Catch you later.