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Sen. Cotton Speaks On Benefits Of Purchasing Greenland

Sarah Kellogg - KUAR News
/
KUAR

Speaking on President Donald Trump’s recent comments on purchasing Greenland from Denmark, Sen. Tom Cotton said there is a logical case for wanting to purchase the territory.

Cotton revealed Wednesday, during the new Talk Business & Politics Power Lunch series, he met with the Danish Ambassador months ago and proposed the sale of Greenland to the United States and told Trump himself to pursue it.

“It’s obviously the right decision and he’s heard that from me and other people as well,” Cotton said. Cotton listed both economic and security reasons on why the acquisition of Greenland would be beneficial.

“First, its economic potential is untold. Probably trillions of dollars of mineral wealth in Greenland that is undeveloped right now,” Cotton said. “Second, even more important, from a security standpoint. Greenland is vital to our national security. There’s a reason why we’ve had an airbase on Greenland for decades.”

Cotton also spoke on immigration and his belief on the need to change the country’s current system.

“Today our immigration system does not serve the needs of our economy at all. We have fewer and fewer entry-level, unskilled and low-skill jobs, yet that is still predominantly the kind of immigrant we admit into the country,” Cotton said. The system Cotton would propose would be a “high-skilled immigration system.” Cotton rebuked the idea that there are jobs that Americans would not want to do that immigrants normally perform.

“When people say ‘jobs that Americans won’t do,’ sometimes they put a period at the end of that sentence. They should put a comma at the end of that sentence and it should say ‘at current wages and benefits,’” Cotton said. When asked on why the president’s administration is looking into payroll tax cuts, while Trump tweets on the strength of the current economy, Cotton said while the economy is strong, there is more that could be done to bolster it.

“If you read the Federal Reserve Chairman Jay Powell’s statements, it would appear that they’re probably going to cut rates once, maybe twice more this year,” Cotton said.  That and the potential passage of the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement, according to Cotton, would continue the growth of the economy.

Sarah Kellogg was a Politics and Government reporter for KUAR from November 2018- August 2021.