00:00Lou Lukens is a former U.S. diplomat, now a senior partner with Signum Global Advisors.
00:04He joins us now from Greenland's capital.
00:06He's been leading a trip there of investors to Greenland.
00:08Let me start there if I could.
00:09And I'm just curious, you've been on the ground, you've been meeting with officials there in Greenland.
00:13How much did this catch you by surprise, this announcement from the president that we gather is going to be
00:17codified next week here in New York at the U.N. General Assembly?
00:21Well, we met in Copenhagen on our way here with the senior career diplomat in the Danish foreign ministry,
00:26and we also met with the U.S. ambassador, and both of them indicated that talks, they were very sort
00:31of tight-lipped about the details,
00:32but both of them seemed to indicate that the talks were proceeding well.
00:35It was a bit of a surprise that the announcement came this quickly, but not completely out of the blue.
00:40I think that Greenland, Denmark, and the United States have been working behind the scenes very quietly for months now
00:45to try to come to an agreement that would give Donald Trump what he wanted while also preserving Danish and
00:52Greenlandic autonomy over their affairs.
00:54But it seems to me that there really isn't that much difference in this deal.
00:59We've got to see the details, but it's just kind of reinforcing and codifying what was already there.
01:03The U.S. did have an agreement to build military bases that it kind of pulled back from.
01:08I was in Greenland summer before last, and they welcomed any kind of investment.
01:13I mean, they need housing help.
01:14They need roads.
01:15They need development of minerals and resources.
01:18What has really changed, if anything, from this agreement?
01:21And it still has to get ratified in Denmark, right?
01:24Correct.
01:25And honestly, it is not that much different.
01:27And the U.S. has had full basing rights here, overflight rights since 1951.
01:31So that aspect of it is not new at all.
01:34I think what's a little bit new, and again, we haven't seen the details, but there's apparently language that allows
01:40the U.S. to block the basing or the deployment of non-NATO troops in Greenland.
01:45There are no non-NATO troops here, and there's no prospect right now that there ever would be, and also
01:51would give the United States sort of right of first refusal or right to refuse investments, foreign investments, especially by
01:59China and Russia.
02:00But again, Russia and China are not here right now.
02:03Their boats aren't off the coast of Greenland.
02:05They're not looking at investments here.
02:08Greenland, this island, desperately wants investment.
02:10They're very happy to have U.S. investment.
02:12So this agreement doesn't really seem to sort of move the needle forward very much beyond where we were before
02:18this all happened.
02:19Talk a bit about the kind of investment they are welcoming or would like to see more of.
02:23I've talked a lot with my colleague Joe Doe, who covers a lot of mining, has been to Greenland on
02:29a couple of trips, and he said a huge problem with this territory is it's so hard to navigate, hard
02:34to get around, that if you're going to build things, it's incredibly difficult just geographically.
02:39What did you hear from the people with whom you spoke there about sort of where there is interest?
02:42What sectors in particular have the most interest and potential for investors from outside the island?
02:47I would say infrastructure, sort of tourist infrastructure, so hotels, I guess we really need hotels here, and also mining.
02:55But let me just paint a little picture to give the audience sort of an idea of how difficult this
02:59is.
02:59Greenland is the size of Alaska and Texas combined, has a population of 56,000 people who are spread out
03:06over about 17 cities, one city, 17 towns, and 54 small settlements, none of which are connected by roads.
03:14So you can't get from between these communities except by flying or by boat or by dog sled up north.
03:22So it's a very harsh terrain.
03:24It's a very difficult place to do business.
03:26The infrastructure needs to kind of create or to develop the mining industry here, to develop hydropower.
03:34There's huge potential in mining and hydropower, but it's very, very difficult.
03:39And they also, they have 0% unemployment here.
03:42Very small population.
03:43Everyone works.
03:45They desperately need a workforce and laborers to come in and do these projects.
03:50What needs to come first?
03:51Is it possible for these two things to come simultaneously?
03:54I've been there twice.
03:55I went with Secretary of State Blinken, and we flew into what was then the largest airstrip,
04:00which was at a place called, I think I'm going to get it right, Kanger Schluchach, which is closer into
04:03the interior.
04:05And you had to take a plane to Nook, because to your point, there are virtually no interior roads.
04:10So is there enough interest, is there enough there there for the resources to warrant building the kind of heavy
04:17road infrastructure that would be needed to get that stuff to,
04:21I guess there's a port that can handle it, or would that have to be built as well?
04:24How many years are we looking out to make this really viable?
04:28You're right.
04:28It's a bit of a chicken and egg situation.
04:30There is, they have expanded the airport in Nook, so you can fly into Nook now instead of having to
04:34transfer that base,
04:35which I did 15 years ago with then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
04:40But part of the cost of these infrastructure development projects is the infrastructure.
04:45So it's not just, if you're looking at a mining project, you're not just doing the mining itself.
04:49You're also having to build a port, build roads within that community to be able to extract and process, or
04:57not process, but extract and ship out these minerals.
05:00So it's sort of side by side.
05:02It's not one before the other.
05:04It all has to happen simultaneously.
05:06I'm very curious sort of how the conversation changes as a result of what was announced yesterday,
05:12and sort of what the general feeling has been like.
05:14And Greenland, again, you were there for a couple of days on this most recent trip,
05:17but I was thinking back to the conversation at the World Economic Forum in Davos earlier this year,
05:21where President Trump came out with a lot of bombast.
05:23It seemed like, I would assume, Greenland was living under this shadow, this, you know, what might happen here.
05:29Does this allay a lot of that ambiguity?
05:30And I guess for those with whom you're working here, does it make investment more attractive or viable,
05:35no longer having that threat of uncertainty seemingly looming as large as it has?
05:40So I think at the same time, they are happy that that threat seems to be gone.
05:43There's still a huge level of sort of suspicion or distrust, I guess, around Donald Trump.
05:48There's a feeling here, and in Copenhagen, by the way, that everything that Donald Trump has gotten in this deal,
05:54he could have just asked for nicely a year and a half ago, and he would have gotten it, right?
05:59So the whole, like, we're going to invade, we're going to take over Greenland was sort of an unnecessary distraction,
06:06which has left, I think, a bad taste for many Greenlandic people.
06:12They're happy about U.S. investment.
06:14They're happy that the sort of the notion that the U.S. will take over Greenland and take away its
06:19sovereignty is now no longer, you know, an issue.
06:22But at the same time, they feel a little bit sort of upset about the whole way this thing has
06:27happened.
06:28When you talk about the path forward with development in Greenland,
06:32obviously this is a place that has been exploited by colonial powers,
06:35which is why I think the ovations from the U.S. got such a resistance,
06:39because they feel like they've finally gained some modicum of independence.
06:42But I did go back again last summer.
06:44I took that first United commercial flight.
06:46You can fly from Newark to Nook.
06:48It's four and a half hours.
06:49I highly recommend it.
06:50And there were shirts everywhere that said Greenland for Greenlanders.
06:54There were anti-Donald Trump slogans.
06:56But when you spoke to people, they were actually very kind and very interested in America
07:00and interested in better schools for people there on the ground,
07:04better resources within Greenland,
07:07because so much of that, they still have to go to Denmark for higher education.
07:10They still have to go to Denmark to access certain things.
07:12Is that part of some of these deals,
07:15is building out things their population needs in return for some of those mineral rights or industrial rights?
07:22I don't think so.
07:24And they actually, you know, they basically, the bulk of the budget here,
07:28the government spending, is based on a block grant that they get every year from Denmark.
07:31So Denmark transfers a huge amount of money,
07:33and that's what sort of funds all these social services and schools and hospitals and things in Greenland.
07:38And the more money they make from minerals, that block grant is then reduced.
07:44So they have to find sort of a fine balance between becoming self-sustaining economically
07:49without losing access to this big block of money from Denmark.
07:52Were Greenland ever to become fully independent,
07:55they would lose that block grant completely.
07:58And this is part of the debate.
07:59Like, all Greenlanders basically think that at some point,
08:03Greenland should be completely autonomous and independent from Denmark.
08:07But they're all very sort of, you know, nobody wants to see that quickly.
08:11They all recognize that they've got a long ways to go
08:13before they can really be economically independent and cut those ties completely.
08:17It's been great to talk to you.
08:18I was talking to Charles Myers as well, your colleague from Signum Advisors.
08:21And you do this kind of frontier investment.
08:23Hey, before I let you go, I could just ask you,
08:25I think he was, last we spoke with him, he'd just been in Caracas and had come back.
08:28Who is interested largely in this space?
08:31What kind of fortitude do you have to have to be a kind of frontier investor
08:33looking at these markets that aren't ignored but not as widely loved as many others are?
08:39Yeah, I mean, look, we had people on this trip from mining companies,
08:43from logistics companies, and from big investment firms.
08:46And so, you know, it's, and Caracas is obviously, and I was on that trip too,
08:50is very different from Nook Greenland.
08:52It's not that you need so much fortitude.
08:54I think we provide our clients who come on these trips with an opportunity to meet.
08:58We met with senior government officials here.
09:00We met with senior diplomats.
09:02We met with members of the private sector to really come and on the ground,
09:05get a real sense for what the investment outlook is and how one does business here.
09:11And I think hearing firsthand on the ground is just, you know,
09:14incredibly valuable and something that you just can't pick up from, you know,
09:17reading the newspapers or browsing online.
09:20Ambassador Lou Lukens, thank you so much.
09:21We're going to have to tag along on one of these cool trips at some point.
09:24Signal Global, of course, Global Advisors Senior Partner.
09:27Thank you for joining us.
09:28Really appreciate it.
09:28All right.
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