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Akbar Novruz

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President Donald Trump said on Wednesday that he has reached a framework for a deal with NATO regarding the future of Greenland, which would include access to rare-earth mineral rights, Azernews reports via CNBC.

Speaking to CNBC after making the initial announcement on Truth Social, Trump said both NATO and the United States would be involved. “They’re going to be involved in mineral rights, and so are we,” he noted, without providing details on preliminary terms.

He didn’t specify any preliminary terms. However, Greenland’s untapped mineral wealth has helped land the island at the top of Trump’s wish list for empire-building.

Trump officials view Greenland’s underground riches as a way to loosen China’s stranglehold over the rare-earth metals that are critical for everything from fighter jets and lasers to electric vehicles and MRI scanners.

Trump has downplayed Greenland’s natural resources, including in his speech to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Wednesday, when he said acquiring rare-earth minerals wasn’t the reason America needed the territory.

“Everyone talks about the minerals. There’s so many,” Trump said. “There’s no such thing as rare earth. There’s rare processing. But there’s so much rare earth. And to get to this rare earth, you got to go through hundreds of feet of ice. That’s not the reason we need it. We need it for strategic national security and international security.”

But hours later, Trump said the deal for Greenland included two parts: his “Golden Dome” missile defense concept and minerals. That tracks with what his former national security adviser Mike Waltz told Fox News in 2024, when Waltz said that the administration’s focus on Greenland was “about critical minerals” and “natural resources.”

The reality is that Denmark’s ownership of Greenland is not what’s stopping the United States from tapping the island’s treasure trove. It’s the punishing Arctic environment.