The prize is great on paper for a real estate tycoon like Trump—after all, Greenland would exceed the Louisiana Purchase as the largest geographic acquisition in U.S. history. But multiple specialists in the region and its resources dismiss the economic reasoning as nonsensical, given that Greenland already is open to greater U.S. investment and military scale-up.

Greenland may be home to large reserves of critical minerals and crude oil, but they’re much cheaper to extract elsewhere in the world, including within the Lower 48, said Otto Svendsen, associate fellow specializing in the Arctic for the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

“The business case is non-existent, setting aside all the political and legal and practical reasons for why I think it’s impossible,” Svendsen told Fortune.

The White House’s own estimations place the cost of a purchase of Greenland close to $700 billion, he said. Then there are the hundreds of billions of dollars needed to fund the developments of mines, oil drilling, roads, electrification, ports, and more—with a wait of 10 to 20 years before seeing any notable commercial success. The U.S. would also presumably assume Denmark’s roughly $700 million in annual subsidies in perpetuity to pay for the education, health care, and more of Greenland’s 56,000 residents.

“The numbers just don’t add up at all,” Svendsen said. “It cannot be hammered home enough that the U.S. has an incredibly favorable arrangement at the moment with an incredible amount of access to Greenlandic territory, both to advance its security and its economic interests.”

Despite ample efforts over the years to develop mines and drill for oil—the last, unsuccessful drilling bid was abandoned in 2011—Greenland today is home to zero oil production and just two active mines, neither of which extract the desired rare earths essential to computer, automotive, and military defense equipment. There’s a small gold mine and another for anorthosite—a mineral used to produce fiberglass, paint, and other common materials. While some rare earths and oil projects are in development—by U.S. companies—they remain in early stages, with no guarantees of success.

The relative lack of success over decades is no fluke, said Malte Humpert, senior fellow and founder of The Arctic Institute nonprofit think tank.

“You’re dealing with ice, polar bears, darkness, lack of power, the sea ice being frozen, really low temperatures. It’s probably one of the roughest places on Earth,” Humpert said. “The fact that it hasn’t been done—when it could have been done—is really all you need to know. It’s very difficult to make it economical.”

None of this has publicly deterred the president, nor has the risk of shattering international laws and the NATO alliance. The White House describes owning Greenland as a national security imperative—a rationale that might outweigh the poor economics of an annexation. But analysts say existing treaties give the U.S. all the needed military advantages in the Arctic with the potential to grow and negotiate for even more.

As Trump focuses on his new “Donroe” doctrine and forewarns of a blitz through much of the Western Hemisphere—since launching a military strike in Venezuela this month, he’s threatened Colombia, Cuba, and Mexico—he has set his sights on annexing Greenland by any means necessary, through a purchase or military action.

“We are going to do something on Greenland whether they like it or not,” Trump told reporters last week. “I would like to make a deal and do it the easy way. But, if we don’t make a deal, we’re going to do it the hard way.”

While Trump publicly mulls seizing Greenland by force, Secretary of State Marco Rubio has focused on a negotiated purchase, which is a type of international diplomacy not practiced since World War II, and an approach that Denmark and Greenland have repeatedly rejected. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for additional comment.

The Trump administration already is planning a large upgrade of its only military base in Greenland, the Pituffik Space Base, with the potential to expand much more.

So why not just continue to grow your existing U.S. footprint in Greenland? If the U.S. doesn’t annex Greenland, then Russia or China will instead, Trump has insisted. “When we own it, we defend it,” the former real estate developer said. “You don’t defend leases the same way. You have to own it.”

What’s at stake

After Trump initiated tariffs and trade wars last year, the United States’ over-reliance on China for critical minerals—especially rare earths—became painfully apparent when China threatened to withhold the necessary soft metals that drive America’s economy and help bolster its national security.

The oxymoron of rare earths is that they’re abundant around the world, but harder to find in larger concentrations that make the economics worthwhile. Greenland theoretically offers those large concentrations.

Greenland’s estimated rare earths reserves offer a smorgasbord of 1.5 million metric tons, including the more uncommon heavy rare earths. That would rank Greenland eighth worldwide, coincidentally just behind the United States, but well behind China and its 44 million tons, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

But as the research firm Wood Mackenzie says in a new report, “Here, ambition runs up against reality. Around 80% of the island is covered by the Greenland Ice Sheet, averaging a mile thick, meaning only limited work has been undertaken to quantify the true scale of Greenland’s deposits.”

An even bigger challenge is the higher costs of developing a mining industry in Greenland’s harsh terrain, where there’s little to no existing infrastructure. There are just a few short, warmer windows when drilling and mining are practical; there is less daylight than almost anywhere on earth; and most of the terrain is accessible only by helicopter.

But the less-discussed issue is that mining is only part of the equation, said Jennifer Li, senior geopolitical analyst for the Rystad Energy research firm.

In tandem, the U.S. must develop a much more extensive rare-earths processing and refining industry if it wants to break China’s near-global monopoly on the complicated refining process. That would mean constructing more minerals refineries in Greenland or elsewhere in the U.S. (Currently some domestic projects are underway, including ones with U.S. subsidies and direct government equity investments.)

The U.S. would also likely have to further subsidize the critical minerals sales with a floor pricing mechanism, to compete against China’s repeated price-dumping practices.

A race for resources

Greenland and Venezuela may represent very different cases, Li said, but they both come back to Trump’s focus on Western Hemisphere dominance and “governing from afar in order to try to change the policy regime.”

In Venezuela, the focus is on crude oil. In Greenland, it’s on critical minerals mining, including rare earths and uranium, and oil drilling. Greenland currently has moratoriums on both uranium mining and on oil drilling—minus grandfathered licenses that allowedone Texas company to drill for oil this summer. “There are a lot of ecological concerns,” Lisaid.

Trump could theoretically end those moratoriums and expedite permitting, essentially green-lighting Greenland for more mining and oil drilling.

Still, “even green-lighting rhetorically isn’t going to lead to seismic changes overnight,” Li said, given the historic lack of success in mining and oil drilling exploration and the many years of infrastructure construction required to build a commercial industry. A “more cooperative dialogue” with Greenland, Denmark, and NATO is a more feasible approach, Li said, than taking things further with annexation or military action.

Current tensions aside, Greenland is eager to attract much more U.S. investment, just not at the expense of ownership and sovereignty, said Christian Keldsen, managing director of the Greenland Business Association.

After all, 97% of Greenland’s exports are seafood, mostly shrimp. And Denmark’s subsidies account for over half of Greenland’s total revenues. Mining is only a tiny piece of the pie. Greenland wants the U.S. to invest in its mining and energy sectors, even developing data center campuses in the spacious and cold terrain that could prove suitable for such facilities, Keldsen said.

Just don’t conquer the icy and barren island. “We’re somewhat irritated by this. We’ve had an open business relationship with the U.S. for years,” Keldsen said. “All this talk creates instability and noise in the background. And, if there’s anything investors don’t like, it’s instability.”

What Trump wants

For all the focus on seizing Greenland of late, it was a cosmetics heir who first put the bug in Trump’s ear during his first term.

Back in 2018, during his first presidential term, Trump’s longtime friend, billionaire Ronald Lauder—from the family of Estée Lauder fame—discussed with Trump the importance of Greenland’s resources and strategic Arctic positioning, especially as ongoing global warming melts the ice sheets and creates more passageways between the U.S. and Russia. (Lauder declined comment for this story.)

Shortly thereafter, Australian geologist Greg Barnes, who founded the massive Tanbreez rare earths mining project in Greenland, which remains in development, briefed Trump at the White House. Last year, New York-based Critical Metals acquired 92.5% ownership of Tanbreez. A pilot project launched earlier in January, although full construction is yet to begin.

“In the 19th century, there was the gold boom. The 20th century was the oil boom,” Critical Metals CEO Tony Sage told Fortune in a recent interview. “We’re in the rare earths boom now, but this boom is going to fund everything for the next 30 to 50 years. Everything in your life needs rare earths.”

The rationale for acquiring Greenland may have less to do with the economic case, and more with Trump’s ego and his real estate background, said historians and analysts who are critical of the idea.

By a difference of just 8,000 square miles, an annexation of Greenland and its estimated 836,000 square miles would exceed the 1803 Louisiana Purchase and its 828,000 square miles, potentially making it the largest acquisition in U.S. history, noted David Silbey, a military historian at Cornell University.

“This is the biggest land grab ever. He loves big things, huge things, he would say,” Silbey said. “He’s a New York real estate guy. He likes to grab land, and he grew up in a world where bullying was part of business practice. He like to bully, and he’s picking on the little guy.”

Because Greenland doesn’t “move the needle economically in any way, shape, or form,” Trump following his real estate instincts is the most logical answer, Silbey said.

When it comes to hugeness, don’t negate the distorted perspective of maps. The Mercator global maps that Trump and many others grew up with, like the one below, show a Greenland that’s appears to be almost as large as all of Africa. In fact, Greenland is one-fourteenth the size of Africa, although it’s still of course quite large (more than triple the geographic footprint of Texas).

Getty Images

“We try to rationalize irrational behavior. This is classic Trump ego politics,” said Humpert of The Arctic Institute. “It’s about him putting a Trump tower in Nuuk and saying he made the U.S. larger than any other president.”

Militarily, Humpert is quick to point out that China and Russia have more ships and submarines traveling near Alaska’s coast than Greenland’s ice. “There’s some truth to the Arctic heating up and there being more power politics in the Arctic,” he said. “But the [U.S.] should take care of its own backyard first.”

Silbey agreed. Offshore of Greenland represents one of the fastest routes between the U.S. and Russia, but existing defense treaties with Denmark give Trump all of the necessary military access for bases and waterway patrols. From a foreign policy standpoint, he said, annexation “is just categorically dumb. You’re blowing up NATO for access you already have.”

A potentially more cynical view comes from Daniel Immerwahr, foreign relations historian at Northwestern University. Immerwahr says Trump is abandoning the U.S.’s long-standing soft power diplomacy approach—the U.S. maintains 750 military bases in other countries—that was intended to avoid wars over land and resources, and is now focusing on the old-school colonialism of ownership and control, especially in the Western Hemisphere

“It may be that we’re entering a world of closed borders, in which case it makes more sense for security reasons to lock down the territories that contain the things you need because you might be afraid some other country would close trade lines,” Immerwahr said, citing critical minerals as an example.

“China’s desires on Taiwan and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have corresponded to the more closed annexationist model,” he added. He also noted that a U.S. seizure of Greenland might be seen as a green light for China and Russia to follow suit in their own spheres of influence.

Trump has repeatedly insisted that, if the U.S. doesn’t acquire Greenland, then “Russia or China will take it over” and exploit its resources and strategic military positioning. But China has invested in many projects in Greenland that have mostly failed, and has largely pulled out since, said Adam Lajeunesse, chair in Canadian and Arctic policy at St. Francis Xavier University in Nova Scotia.

There’s no logic to a Chinese or Russian takeover, especially when Greenland has U.S. and NATO military backing, he said.

“That’s a myth,” Lajeunesse said. “The economic bogeyman the Trump administration is putting out there is really quite fictitious.”

Many employers agree. One in six hiring managers hesitate to bring on recent grads due to a lack of workplace skills like teamwork and communication. Yet nine in ten educators say their grads are ready to enter the workforce.

Employers can’t afford to wait for this gap to close on its own. As retirements accelerate and artificial intelligence automates some entry-level work, they’ll have to take the lead — by partnering directly with colleges and universities to give students real-world experience before they graduate.

The pandemic widened the disconnect between employers and young workers. Years of remote learning deprived students of formative experiences like lab work and campus leadership. Many graduates now have strong academic foundations but less practice navigating unspoken professional norms. 

On top of that, many entry-level roles that once taught young professionals the basics — data analysis, coding, and report-writing among them — are disappearing as companies turn to AI. That may boost productivity today. But it prevents firms from developing the next generation of talent to lead them in the future. 

Universities and employers have grown apart, too. Curricula struggle to keep pace with rapidly evolving fields like AI or cybersecurity. Many faculty still measure preparedness for the workforce by mastery of course material. Employers, by contrast, may prize the ability to work as part of a team and to solve problems under pressure over the ability to recall facts quickly — especially given the rise of AI.

Meanwhile, with hybrid work the norm at many firms, new hires may have fewer opportunities for the informal learning and mentorship that can accelerate their competence and professional growth.

The result? Graduates entering an economy that prizes skills they haven’t had a chance to practice — and employers facing talent shortages they can’t fill. 

One of the most effective ways to close that gap is through closer collaboration between universities and industry. 

When students work directly with industry mentors — in a lab, on a factory floor, or in a startup — they learn the teamwork and communication skills that few professors can teach, no matter how collaborative or group-oriented the class. An engineer troubleshooting a real production issue can learn more about working in the “real world” in a week than in a semester of lectures.

For their part, employers get to identify and invest in talent early, developing pipelines for graduates who already understand workplace expectations. These partnerships ensure a steady flow of job-ready professionals in high-demand fields like engineering and healthcare technology, where demand for talent far outpaces supply.

Universities and employers are demonstrating how effective this model can be. 

Purdue and Eli Lilly are training biomanufacturing talent through a $250 million partnership in AI and robotics. Google’s AI lab at Carnegie Mellon gives students real-world experience before they graduate. Siemens’ new Center of Excellence at Georgia Tech immerses engineering students in digital twin and simulation projects. 

At Abbott, we’re investing in similar partnerships — linking classrooms to cutting-edge healthcare technology and helping launch careers in science and engineering. Through the HBCU Cybersecurity Industry Collaboration Initiative, we’ve joined with Microsoft and [hotlink]Raytheon Technologies[/hotlink] to strengthen cybersecurity curricula at engineering schools at Historically Black Colleges and Universities.

Initiatives like these can restore what technology has eroded. By building bridges between classrooms and workplaces, they offer students the chance to build hard and soft skills. An engineering student designing a prototype for a company gains not only technical fluency, but also the kinds of judgment and teamwork skills that textbooks can’t teach. At the same time, companies can observe how students solve problems and collaborate — insights that inform hiring and training. 

Technology is reshaping every industry. But no algorithm can substitute for sound judgment, teamwork, or the ability to communicate clearly. Those skills are the sole product of human experience. If companies want ready talent tomorrow, they need to help build it today.

The opinions expressed in Fortune.com commentary pieces are solely the views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of Fortune.

Stablecoins, which are backed by reserves designed to peg their value to a fiat currency like the dollar, were long used by experienced crypto traders. Today, millions of ordinary people are using them too via digital wallets. All of this raises an intriguing business question: What companies are best poised to capitalize on the new stablecoin trend?

Will it be a legacy remittance player, like a Western Union or MoneyGram? Or will it be a crypto-native company, like a Kraken or Coinbase, or instead PayPal or one of the growing number of fintechs entering the stablecoin space?

While the emerging stablecoin industry is there for the taking, experts say that both legacy remittance players and newer entrants each possess their own set of advantages and challenges. 

A broken remittances system 

When people send money across borders, fees are steep. The World Bank found in a report earlier this year that the average fee for sending remittances was more than 6%. That cost can be grating over time, especially for low-income immigrants sending money back to developing countries. 

“People are spending extraordinary sums to send money abroad,” said Yesha Yadav, a law professor at Vanderbilt University who specializes in financial regulation. “This impacts how much the most cash-strapped and vulnerable people have in their pocket because some middle person is taking money for no good reason.”

This is where stablecoins could step in. Thanks to blockchain technology, these digital tokens can make international payments faster and at lower costs. The International Monetary Fund recently published an article about how this digital currency could improve payments and global finance. 

Stablecoins have also become a priority in the financial world since President Donald Trump signed the Genius Act in July. The legislation established a regulatory framework for the digital currency. Since then, major remittance players, like Western Union and PayPal, have developed their stablecoin offerings. 

The case for and against incumbents

When it comes to widespread adoption of stablecoins for remittances, traditional players, like Western Union, have the advantage of an existing customer base around the world. This type of company already has established regulation in different countries. That’s according to Nate Svensson, a senior equity research analyst at Deutsche Bank, who says that a company like Western Union has developed compliance internationally for decades, if not centuries. 

“I think [Western Union] has a lot of built in advantages relative to these nascent crypto players,” he said. 

Another analyst, Brett Horn from Morningstar, likewise suggested traditional remittance brands may hold the advantage in the race, citing their long history with clients. When asked about crypto startups who solely focus on remittances using stablecoins, he said, “A lot of times it sounds really good, but I think, frankly, [these startups] are waving away some real difficulties that they might have.”

On the other hand, crypto-native companies have an advantage in their familiarity with the technology and their ability to be nimble. The likes of Western Union, in contrast, may find it hard to move away from long-standing business practices that both the company and their customers know well. When it incorporates stablecoin transfers for remittances alongside its existing fiat transfer system, it essentially has two arms of its business competing with one another. 

“They’re competing with themselves, and that’s just a natural disincentive for things to change,” said Jessica Wachter, a professor of finance at The Wharton School, about legacy remittance players. “A startup would be basically all in on [stablecoins], whereas I’m not sure a [Western Union] would be all in on it.”

Besides legacy financial institutions and crypto startups, another kind of company is vying to win this fight—the bigger crypto companies. Kraken, for example, has an app where users can send and receive funds across more than a hundred countries. 

Regulation for this digital currency is still relatively new, as the Genius Act was only signed into law in July, and the development of the technology is still in its early stages. Yesha Yadav, the law professor at Vanderbilt University, thinks that stablecoins will become even more popular this year, as their consumer protection rules get firmed up.

“I think stablecoins have an enormous runway to expand their footprint,” she said.