Trump's 'no cost' Greenland deal has no price tag, records show

Audio By Carbonatix

(The Center Square) – No one in Washington will say what establishing two new U.S. defense areas in Greenland will cost U.S. taxpayers or when Congress will be asked to pay.

President Donald Trump signed the deal Tuesday and says it will cost nothing.

The White House Press Office, asked whether Trump's "no cost" claim covers construction at the two new sites, referred The Center Square to the president's remarks and the text of the agreement.

The Department of War referred the same question to the White House. Pituffik Space Base's public affairs office, the press offices of the Senate and House Armed Services Committees, and the Embassy of Denmark did not respond by publication.

Four days before signing, Trump had previewed the deal on Truth Social.

"There will be NO COST to the United States!" he wrote Sept. 18, calling the pact an "Infinite Life" agreement with no end date.

The Department of War's fiscal year 2027 budget request, submitted in April, five months before this week's signing, seeks $31.25 billion for military construction and family housing combined and contains no listed Greenland project. The fiscal year 2026 military construction law included $32 million for a runway approach and landing system at Pituffik Space Base, but the fiscal year 2027 request contains no new Greenland military construction project.

The U.S. already pays to run the one base it has in Greenland. The Air Force awarded Inuksuk A/S, a Greenlandic joint venture now doing business as Inussuk A/S, a 12-year contract with a $3.95 billion ceiling in December 2022 to operate and maintain Pituffik through 2034, according to the Department of War's own contract announcement. That's about $329 million a year if the full ceiling were reached. That's the contract ceiling for operating and maintaining the existing base, not an estimate for the two new ones.

Under the agreement's terms, the location, scope and size of the new sites are left to future talks between Washington, Copenhagen and Nuuk, talks that escalate to ministerial level, meaning cabinet-rank officials in each government, if the two sides can't agree within 90 days. The agreement says the U.S. will award construction and maintenance contracts to Greenlandic firms to the maximum extent possible.

Trump signed the agreement Tuesday with Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen and Greenland Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen at the United Nations General Assembly in New York.

It amends the 1951 U.S.-Danish defense treaty, letting the U.S. expand Pituffik Space Base and establish new "Defense Areas" at Narsarsuaq and Mestersvig. It bars non-NATO countries from building military installations or gaining influence over "particularly sensitive" sectors in Greenland and has no end date. It doesn't take effect until Denmark and Greenland complete their own parliamentary procedures.

Trump has cast Greenland as essential to countering Russia and China in the Arctic and to his planned "Golden Dome" missile defense system. Pituffik is the northernmost U.S. military installation and hosts the Space Force's 821st Space Base Group, supporting missile-warning and space-surveillance operations.

Greenland has also drawn interest for its rare earth and critical mineral deposits, though the agreement signed Tuesday addresses security access rather than resource development.

Trump spent the first weeks of the year pushing for outright U.S. ownership of Greenland, at one point threatening tariffs on Denmark and seven other NATO allies unless Copenhagen agreed to sell, and declining for weeks to rule out using military force to take it. Trump backed off the tariffs in January after meeting NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte in Davos, Switzerland, calling it instead a "framework of a future deal."

Tuesday's signing turns that framework into a security and basing agreement, not the outright purchase or annexation Trump had originally sought.

Mark Cancian, a retired Marine colonel and senior defense adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told The Center Square the existing Danish and Greenlandic facilities at both sites are small, essentially contingency bases with caretaker staffs. His rough estimate for any U.S. expansion: "maybe a few tens of millions of dollars."

Trump described the plan in bigger terms hours before signing.

"We will begin the process of developing a large military presence in the appropriate locations," he told the UN General Assembly. "We will be building two very major military bases."

Denmark separately announced a 1.2 billion kroner (about $180 million) package for Greenland covering 2026 to 2029, part of a broader 1.6 billion kroner (about $240 million) framework agreed to last year, aimed at health care, infrastructure and energy security, not the U.S. military expansion. At the signing, Frederiksen said Denmark had already paid its share of the burden.

"I agree when you, Mr. President, have asked allies to pay our part of the burden. In fact, I think it's only fair. The Kingdom of Denmark has done exactly that."

Nobody contacted for this story would say when Congress might see a request to pay for the new bases, or how much it would be. The 90-day period for resolving disagreements over the sites begins Tuesday.