He said it wasn't a pressing territorial ambition of Trump's, but rather some indications of lithium and rare earth metal deposits, or promising indications thereof, that make Greenland a place of interest. Many of these elements, needed for advanced electronics and batteries, are found mostly in China, a source that could easily turn off the supply spigot in case of a more hostile relationship. Since Trump's ability to spontaneously locate Greenland on a map is questionable at best, I find his hypothesis plausible. These metals, except for lithium, usually occur in small quantities, so large extraction operations would be necessary, and it would be convenient to the extracting nation not to have environmental considerations to worry about, either during extraction, or after they are done. Lithium is somewhat more plentiful, but big quantities are necessary to make the big batteries used electric cars. Bolivia has a large deposit, but they are not always on the best of terms with the USA. Though a potentially huge deposit has just been suspected in northern Nevada, there will probably need to be some removal of environmental considerations before full scale pollute-at-will mining can be started.
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