It’s unlikely you’ve missed the story. In recent weeks, US President-elect Donald Trump has again repeatedly voiced his desire for the United States to take “ownership and control” of Greenland – an autonomous territory of the Kingdom of Denmark.
Trump first floated the idea of the US buying Greenland back in 2019. At the time, he argued, quite correctly, that he was not the first US president to come up with the idea.
Modern-day territory sales are rare. Whether Trump will revive them remains to be seen. But the question is intriguing – how would one decide what to offer for an entire state, territory or nation?
Read more:
Trump won’t rule out force to take Greenland – a country with a complex colonial history
Not a new idea
Greenland’s strategic position has been of great value to the US since the early days of the Cold War.
In 1946, then-President Harry Truman offered to buy the Danish territory for US$100 million in gold. It is reported the Danes had much the same reaction to that offer as they did in 2019, and again in 2025: “No, thank you.”
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One sovereign nation buying territory from another may seem strange today, but there are many instances where this has happened over time.
The US purchased much of its Western expansion in the early 19th century.
This included the “Louisiana Purchase”, vast swathes of land in North America, bought from France in 1803 for US$15 million (an estimated US$416 million in 2024 figures).
About half a century later, the US paid Mexico for large amounts of territory after the Mexican-American War. The US also bought Alaska from Russia in 1867, for US$7.2 million (over US$150 million today).
And it bought the US Virgin Islands from Denmark in 1917 for US$25 million (over US$600 million today) in gold coin.
It isn’t just the US. Japan, Pakistan, Russia, Germany and Saudi Arabia have all purchased territory, transferring jurisdiction over local inhabitants and gaining land, access to critical waterways or simply geographical buffers.
What is a country’s value?
Valuing a country (or an autonomous territory like Greenland) is no simple task. Unlike companies or assets, countries embody a mix of tangible and intangible elements that resist straightforward economic measurement.
A logical place to start is gross domestic product, or “GDP”. Simply put, GDP is the value of all the final goods and services produced in an economy in a given time (usually one year).
But does this really capture the true “value” of an economy? When we buy something, the benefits derived from it last – we hope – into the future.
So, basing a purchase price on the value produced in a given time period may not adequately reflect the value of that object (in this case, an entire economy) to the buyer. We need to consider the ability to continue to generate value into the future.
Greenland’s productive resources include not only the existing businesses, governments and workers used to generate its current GDP (estimated at about US$3.236 billion in 2021), but also its (difficult to measure) ability to change and improve its future GDP. This will depend on how productive these resources are expected to be in the future.
There are other attributes of value not captured in GDP. These include the quality of its capital (both human and infrastructure), quality of life, natural resources and strategic position.
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Unexploited resources
Beyond what is already there, from a market perspective, it’s the as-yet unexploited resources that make Greenland valuable.
Greenland has been mining coal for decades, with large, confirmed reserves. The subsoil has been shown to contain rare earths, precious metals, graphite and uranium.
In addition to coal mining, there is gold, silver, copper, lead, zinc, graphite and marble.
Finally, there is the potential for major oil exploitation off the waters of Greenland. None of this potential is reflected in Greenland’s current GDP.
National assets are easier
Putting a price on a large national asset, such as the Panama Canal (which Trump also wants under US control), is a much easier prospect.
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The theory of asset valuation is a fundamental part of the finance discipline and dates back to the 18th century.
The “asset pricing model” has evolved over time, but fundamentally, it’s about estimating the future net income flows from an asset, based on a few inputs.
For the Panama Canal, this would involve estimating the future net income that could be generated, based on factors such as fees generated by its use and the level of anticipated traffic.
You’d then take steps to subtract the anticipated costs of maintaining the equipment and any expected damage to the health of the waterway. Another factor in determining what you would pay is the risk of actually realising that net income.
The value or “price tag” of such an asset is usually determined by working out the present value of all of these future (net) income flows.
Modern territory sales are rare
The decline in territorial sales is tied to several factors. Historically, land sales often benefited ruling elites rather than ordinary citizens. In modern democracies, it is nearly impossible to sell land if local citizens oppose the idea.
Such democracies operate on the principle that national assets should serve the people, not the government’s coffers. Selling a territory today would require demonstrating clear, tangible benefits to the population, a difficult task in practice.
Nationalism also plays a powerful role. Land is deeply tied to national identity and selling it off is often seen as a betrayal. Governments, as custodians of national pride, are reluctant to entertain offers, no matter how tempting.
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Compounding this is a strong international norm against changing borders, born of fears that one territorial adjustment could trigger a cascade of claims and conflicts elsewhere.
In today’s world, buying a country or one of its territories may be little more than a thought experiment. Nations are political, cultural and historical entities that resist commodification.
Greenland may theoretically have a price, but the real question is whether such a transaction could ever align with modern values and realities.
