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The Trump administration has made a lot of arguments for why the U.S. should take over Greenland: national security, untapped minerals, Denmark's supposed failure to defend it. Now there's a new one on the list, and it involves shrimp.
Tom Dans, the Trump-appointed chair of the United States Arctic Research Commission, told The New Yorker's Ben Taub earlier this year that taking control of Greenland's seafood industry could solve one of America's most pressing problems: bringing back unlimited shrimp at Red Lobster.
"My view is that the United States could take all the seafood Greenland could produce, and cut out the middleman, and keep it from China, and you could bring back all-you-can-eat shrimp at Red Lobster," Dans said.
There's just one problem. Red Lobster already brought back a revised version of the deal back in April. No annexation required. The chain went bankrupt in 2024 after the original all-you-can-eat shrimp promo cost it roughly $11 million in losses in just three months.
The CEO, Damola Adamolekun, swore it would never return, "because I know how to do math." He brought it back anyway this spring, just at a higher price.
So the U.S. didn't need to take over an Arctic island to get its shrimp back. It just needed to wait a few months.
Dans isn't some random guy with an opinion, either. He's worked inside the Treasury Department, sat on a National Security Council task force focused specifically on Greenland, and has visited the island repeatedly through his own nonprofit. Danish officials have flagged him as one of a small group of Americans running private "influence operations" there.
He's never actually set foot in Greenland himself, but he insists that taking it over is simple. "There's nothing secret about the contours of the thing," he told The New Yorker. "This is not a toughie, if you come from an investment-banking or dealmaking background, to solve."
Trump has been talking about taking Greenland since his first term, but it got a lot louder once he returned to office. He's called Denmark's military presence there "two dog sleds" and refused to rule out using force to take it, per The Independent.
"We'll get Greenland. Yeah, 100 percent," he told NBC News in March — adding that he doesn't "take anything off the table."
The world has not been quiet about it. Denmark's prime minister told the U.S. to "cease its threats against a historically close ally." Denmark pledged roughly $4 billion in new Arctic defense spending. Thousands of Greenlanders — nearly a third of the capital's population — marched in protest. And 86 percent of Americans say they're against taking Greenland by force, according to a Quinnipiac poll from January.
The push hasn't disappeared. The New York Times reported last month that U.S. officials are still quietly meeting with Greenlandic and Danish negotiators behind closed doors.
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