President-elect Donald Trump on Tuesday outlined an ambitious plan for U.S. expansion through seizing control of Greenland, the Panama Canal and maybe even Canada.

He refused to rule out using military action to acquire Greenland and the Panama Canal but said he would rely solely on economic force to make Canada part of the United States.

He questioned Denmark’s legal claim to Greenland, criticized China’s role in operating the Panama Canal and the late President Jimmy Carter for giving the canal away to Panama in 1979, and said Canada gets far more than it gives in its dealings with the U.S.

“I’m talking about protecting the free world,” he said at a press conference at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida, setting a muscular tone on foreign policy less than two weeks before his Jan. 20 inauguration.

“You don’t even need binoculars. You look outside. You have China ships all over the place. You have Russian ships all over the place. We’re not letting that happen,” Mr. Trump said.

As Mr. Trump spoke, his eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., had just arrived in Greenland for a private visit that did not include planned meetings with officials.

Mr. Trump has had designs on Greenland at least since his first term. It would give the U.S. a strategic Arctic foothold and improved posture against Russia and China.

Greenland is already home to a large U.S. military base.

His beef with Panama is more recent and stems from China’s presence there and the high fees U.S. ships, including Navy vessels, pay to use the canal.

Panamanian President Jose Raul Mulino has insisted China isn’t running the canal. However, a China-based company has a major stake in ports on the Atlantic and Pacific ends of the Panama Canal.

Mr. Trump proposed buying Greenland during his first term, but he did not pursue a deal for the territory, which is controlled by Denmark, a NATO ally.  

“I’m not going to commit to that,” Mr. Trump said when asked if he’d rule out the use of military force. “It might be that you’ll have to do something. The Panama Canal is vital to our country. We need Greenland for national security purposes.” 

And if Copenhagen intervened, he said, the U.S. would “tariff Denmark at a very high level.”

Still, Mr. Trump said he has no concrete plans to acquire Greenland, though he has repeatedly floated the idea. When announcing his choice for U.S. ambassador to Denmark last month, he said that “for purposes of national security and freedom throughout the world … the ownership and control of Greenland is an absolute necessity.”

John Bolton, a former U.S. ambassador to the U.N., identified key benefits to U.S. control of Greenland, such as buffering Russia’s influence and blunting China’s quest to be an Arctic power.

However, Mr. Bolton told The Washington Times that Mr. Trump’s tactics were self-defeating.

“Trump’s remarks, sending Donny Jr. to Greenland, is pushing locally, democratically elected government into a corner, and pushing the democratically elected Danish government into a corner,” he said. “So what Trump is doing is undercutting the various objectives he says he wants. … Trump may think he is having a good time with it. They’re not having a good time with this in Greenland and Denmark. And if he’s serious about trying to get security for the United States, he ought to button it.”

Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said Tuesday that Greenland “has been very, very clear … that there is a lot of support among the people of Greenland that Greenland is not for sale and will not be in the future either.”

On another foreign policy front, Mr. Trump warned that “all hell will break out in the Middle East” if Hamas does not release the hostages it has held in Gaza by the time he returns to the White House on Jan. 20. 

“If those hostages aren’t back … it will not be good for Hamas and it will not be good, frankly, for anyone,” he said. 

Steve Witkoff, Mr. Trump’s incoming Middle East envoy, briefly joined the press conference and said, “We’re making a lot of progress” in trying to free the hostages, and they are “really hopeful that by the inaugural we’ll have some good things to announce.”

Mr. Trump made a slew of other pronouncements at the freewheeling, more than hour-long press conference, including:

• He announced that Dubai-based Damac Properties will spend $20 billion to build new data centers across the U.S.

• Mr. Trump said he wants to change the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America.

• He railed against the “weaponization of justice” by Democrats and called Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith a “deranged individual.” 

• He promised to undo parts of President Biden’s executive action banning offshore drilling.

• He predicted Russia would “escalate” the war in Ukraine and called the conflict “complicated.” 

Regarding the Panama Canal, Mr. Trump said Panama is price-gouging U.S. ships that pass through the strategic waterway, which the U.S. built in the early 1900s connecting the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.

He also called it a “disgrace” that the late Mr. Carter, who died Dec. 29 at age 100 and was lying in state at the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday, gave away the canal to Panama and that Panama didn’t uphold its end of the deal.

The U.S. returned the Panama Canal to the country in 1979 and ended its joint partnership in controlling the canal zone in 1999. 

“They laugh at us because they think we’re stupid,” he said. “But we’re not stupid anymore, so the Panama Canal is under discussion with them right now.”

In the case of Canada, Mr. Trump said Tuesday that bringing the U.S.’s northern neighbor under its control would create an economic powerhouse and enhance border security.

He said joining Canada and the United States “would really be something.”

“You get rid of that artificially drawn line, and you take a look at what that looks like, and it would also be much better for national security,” Mr. Trump said.

He said that the U.S. spends “hundreds of billions” of dollars annually to protect and take care of Canada, but said America doesn’t “need anything they have.” 

“We don’t need cars. We don’t need their lumber,” Mr. Trump said of the U.S.’s northern neighbor. He also called for hockey legend Wayne Gretzky to replace longtime prime minister Justin Trudeau, who resigned on Monday. 

Canadian officials have said Canada will never be a part of the U.S.

Conservative commentator Jeb Babbin recently suggested the expansionist rhetoric is in line with Mr. Trump’s modus operandi of keeping “our allies off balance and our enemies feeling more secure than they should.”

“He probably figures that bullying Panama will reduce those [canal] fees. It might work,” he wrote in a recent op-ed in The Washington Times.

U.S. military bases in Greenland also make strategic sense, he said, though one in Iceland would be better.

“Perhaps Mr. Trump was trying to spur Denmark’s defense spending. He succeeded. Danish Defense Minister Troels Poulsen announced, soon after Mr. Trump’s comment, an increase in funding for Greenland’s defenses of about $1.5 billion,” Mr. Babbin said. “The Danes insist that Mr. Trump’s remarks had nothing to do with their decision to spend on defense.”

• Seth McLaughlin can be reached at smclaughlin@washingtontimes.com.

• Jeff Mordock can be reached at jmordock@washingtontimes.com.

• Mallory Wilson can be reached at mwilson@washingtontimes.com.