Healey, Denmark sign ‘collaboration agreement’ amid Trump’s Greenland gambit

Gov. Maura Healey and Danish officials signed a “collaboration agreement” Tuesday, as tensions between the Nordic country and the United States remain over President Trump’s repeated calls for U.S. ownership of Greenland, a territory of Denmark.

The agreement was signed days after talks kicked off between the U.S., Greenland and Denmark on how to boost security in the Arctic. The discussions were prompted in part by Trump’s concerns about countering threats from Russia and China in the region.

Healey and Jesper Møller Sørensen, the Danish ambassador to the United States, did not publicly address Trump’s push to acquire Greenland during a roughly half-hour appearance at the State House in Boston.

“We're not here today to talk about the Trump administration and what they're doing," Healey said. She called Denmark a “significant trading partner for Massachusetts.”

The agreement signed by Healey and Sørensen calls for a “sustained effort” to facilitate collaboration between private and public research institutions, businesses and non-profit organizations in Massachusetts and Denmark.

“We have a quarter billion dollars annually in trade at last count, and this exchange has been important for both Massachusetts and Denmark,” she said.

Asked if the collaboration is part of a strategy to shore up relationships while Danish officials contend with Trump in Washington, Sørensen said he is “very focused” on strengthening ties with individual states.

“For the last three years that I have been in the United States, I've signed collaboration agreements with the governor in Nevada, the governor in Oklahoma. I hope to sign another one with a Republican governor later this year,” Sørensen told reporters.

Trump’s calls to annex Greenland, a semiautonomous territory of a NATO ally, have inflamed U.S.-European relationships.

The president announced last month he would place new tariffs on Denmark and seven other European countries that opposed U.S. ownership of the territory, only to drop the threat after a deal was announced over access to the island.

The Danish Foreign Ministry said talks that began last week would focus on “how we can address U.S. concerns about security in the Arctic while respecting the red lines of the Kingdom.”

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said last week at a Congressional hearing: “We’ve got a little bit of work to do, but I think we’re going to wind up in a good place, and I think you’ll hear the same from our colleagues in Europe very shortly."

Material from the Associated Press was used in this report.