Trump dreams of empire expansion

• In each case, Trump is blending trolling, negotiation and intimidation.
• He pitched statehood for Canada at least in part to needle "Governor" Justin Trudeau.
• But he has doubled down in the last 48 hours (including via memes) on taking over Greenland and claiming the Panama Canal. It's unclear how exactly either would be accomplished short of an invasion.

Between the lines: This is Trump's foreign policy playbook, or lack thereof. He says wild stuff, sometimes acts on it, and often doesn't.

• Prepare for whiplash after four years of President Biden extolling alliances and institutions.
• Trump has little regard for the "global order," and thinks throwing foreign partners off balance — or, when possible, steamrolling them — better serves American interests.
• Even if his proposals aren't always entirely serious, they can't be ignored.

State of play: Greenland's prime minister, Múte Egede, hit back at Trump on Monday: "Greenland is ours. We are not for sale and will never be for sale. We must not lose our long struggle for freedom."

• A day earlier, Trump had labeled taking "ownership" of the world's largest island "an absolute necessity."
• People involved in Trump's transition have been discussing how an acquisition or custodianship of Greenland would work, according to Reuters.
• The island's attractions include its natural resources and its location, as the U.S., Russia and other powers scramble for footholds in the Arctic.

Flashback: It was widely treated as a joke when Trump first floated buying Greenland in 2019.

• Then Trump canceled a trip to Denmark, which controls Greenland as an overseas territory, after Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen rebuffed him.

Meanwhile, Trump pronounced Saturday that the U.S. would "demand that the Panama Canal be returned to us" if fees for U.S. ships to transit the waterway — which the U.S. returned to Panamanian control beginning in 1977 — were not reduced.

• Panama President José Raúl Mulino declared in an on-camera address Sunday that Panama would not hand over a single square meter of the canal, to which Trump replied on Truth Social: "We'll see about that!"
• Trump followed up with a picture of an American flag flying over the canal, captioned: "Welcome to the United States Canal!"

• Trump also cited "China," which increasingly dominates trade throughout the Americas, as a reason to take control of the canal.

Zoom out: That's the second time this month that Trump proposed a land grab in the context of trying to renegotiate trade terms.

• Trump previously told Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau that his country could avoid tariffs if it became America's 51st state — a message he has repeatedly re-upped through memes and jokes.

But it's not all fun and games. Trump's allies have also been discussing a potential "soft invasion" of Mexico, as one adviser phrased it to Rolling Stone. That could involve targeting cartels through cross-border special forces operations or drone strikes.

• Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum called that idea "entirely a movie" and said: "of course we do not agree with an invasion or the presence of this type in our country."
• But Trump's picks to run the State Department, Pentagon, National Security Council and border policy have all endorsed some form of U.S. military operation against the cartels.

The bottom line: America First is colliding with American imperialism. No one, including Trump, really knows how it will all play out.