There is tendency for analysts to look for complicated and sophisticated planning in Donald Trump’s schemes, like sort of taking over Venezuela or grabbing Greenland away from our allies. But the idea that Trump is a sophisticated thinker contradicts everything we know about him. 

Trump is someone who routinely makes utterly absurd claims about the economy and the world. He has trillions of dollars or tariff revenue coming in and tens of trillions in foreign investment, and drug prices falling by 1,500 percent. These are not just the usual politician’s exaggerated claims; these numbers are beyond absurd.

And it’s not just arithmetic Trump flunks. He insists that Portland, a beautiful city where people routinely walk their dogs in the parks and eat at outdoor cafes and restaurants, is overcome by rioters and burning to the ground. He said that people were scared to go out to eat in Washington, DC before he sent in the National Guard, and since then no one has been murdered there. Both are easily shown to not to be true.

He insists global warming is not happening and that wind turbines don’t provide electricity. On the latter point, he claims that China sells their turbines to suckers but doesn’t use them itself. In fact, China is by far the world’s leader in wind power generation. 

I could go on at length with Trump’s delusions, but it really shouldn’t be hard to convince people that Trump lives in an imaginary world. Give that reality, why would anyone think that his international plans, like seizing Greenland, are part of a grand scheme?

If we look at what Trump says as his motivation, he gives two rationales. The first is national defense. He claims that Chinese and Russian ships are sailing off the coast of Greenland and the US needs to take charge of the island’s defense to stop this. The second is that we need access to Greenland’s minerals for national security.

The first part is ridiculous. There are not large numbers of Russian and Chinese ships sailing by Greenland. But the second part is even more absurd. Greenland and Denmark have a treaty with the United States giving it the power to locate bases there for mutual defense. It already has one base and could have more, if Trump asked. In fact, it used to have more bases and troops located in Greenland but took them away after the end of the Cold War.

The second part is also absurd. The United States could already contract to mine minerals in Greenland. The reason no one does is that they are difficult and expensive to reach. It would not be profitable, especially since all of the minerals believed to be under Greenland’s ice sheet are available elsewhere at much lower cost.

The most likely explanation for Trump’s desire to take Greenland is that it is big. And it is especially big on a polar projection map, which exaggerates the size of land masses close to the poles. It is likely that Trump doesn’t understand this concept and imagines Greenland to be far bigger than it actually is.

But those who want to attribute great cunning to Trump are convinced that his plan is to lock up key minerals in Greenland and elsewhere and deny them to China, thereby undermining its economy. This would both involve much longer term thinking than Donald Trump has ever shown himself capable of, and also serious confusion about the way its economy functions.

Many minerals are essential for China’s economy now, and it has worked hard to ensure that it has access to them, from both domestic and foreign sources. But China has also been tremendously innovative and managed to find ways to reduce its reliance on products from abroad. Its massive transition to clean energy is the most visible case.

But to take another important example: Lithium has been an essential component in the batteries used in electric vehicles and to store electricity. But China has been working to develop alternatives. Already, CATL, the world’s largest battery manufacturer, is marketing sodium-based batteries as an alternative to lithium batteries.  

Unlike lithium, sodium is cheap and plentiful. It also is much less environmentally destructive to mine. Perhaps in Trump’s vision he will have shut off China from access to lithium in ten or fifteen years. He might consider that a great victory, but in ten or fifteen years, China likely will not need lithium.

The same will likely be the case with most of the other minerals Trump might hope to monopolize. Who knows if this is really his vision, but if it is, it is one that doesn’t make much sense. 

This is a case where it makes sense to accept what is front of our faces. Trump is a buffoon and his policies are buffoonery.