Inside Walmart's ambitious plan to make your clothes in America again
On a crisp day in May, Josh Blackman, a third generation cotton farmer, is sitting atop his 14-foot tall John Deere planter on his family farm in Littleton, North Carolina. The planter is an engineering marvel. Its 10 arms create neat rows in the soil, then drop cotton seeds at the right depth, allowing one man to do the work of 50 laborers. By October, this field will be blanketed with fluffy white bolls of cotton that never fail to take the 34-year-old Blackman's breath away. 'Cotton is so pretty at harvest time,' he tells me.
Blackman's grandparents established Warren Farms in 1941. Until the 1960s, roughly 95% of the clothes Americans wore were made domestically, so cotton from Warren Farms would travel by truck to nearby mills and factories to become Fruit of the Loom T-shirts and Levi's jeans. But over the past five decades, the U.S. apparel industry has been decimated. Today, 97% of the clothes that Americans buy is imported, largely from China, Bangladesh, and Vietnam. The majority of Blackman's crop will be shipped to Asia where it will be turned into fabric, then cut and sewn into garments at low-wage factories.
Blackman often feels he is at the mercy of geopolitical forces. He's competing with farmers in developing countries who produce more cheaply because they pay lower wages and have weaker environmental protections. China, the world's biggest cotton importer, has an outsized influence on the commodity's price. This year, Blackman expects to lose money on his harvest because the price of cotton is less than 70 cents a pound, down about 10 cents from 2024, which was already considered a bad year. 'The weather determines the crop, and the market determines what we get for it,' he says. But Blackman believes that if apparel manufacturing returned to the United States, there would be more demand for domestic cotton, allowing him to earn more. 'Bringing the factories to America—opening them back up—will create a market for my cotton right here,' he says.
For years, the idea of breathing life back into American clothing factories, reversing half a century of off-shoring, seemed like a pipe dream. But the plate tectonics of the apparel industry are shifting. Over the past decade, dozens of American-made labels like Buck Mason, American Trench, Imogene & Willie, and Duckworth have sprung up, tapping into the skeletal remains of the domestic supply chain. This was a small-scale effort: These high-end brands make clothes for affluent customers who care about sustainability, ethical labor, and durability. But everything changed last summer, when Walmart—the largest company in the world—entered the picture. The retailer dropped a $12.98 T-shirt made end-to-end in the U.S. just in time for the Fourth of July.
Subscribe to the Design newsletter.The latest innovations in design brought to you every weekday
SIGN UP
Privacy Policy
|
Fast Company Newsletters
advertisement
The final deadline for Fast Company's Next Big Things in Tech Awards is Friday, June 20, at 11:59 p.m. PT. Apply today.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
32 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Buffalo Trace's New Bourbon Is an Affordable Game-Changer, Granted They Make Enough It
Will the distiller's new 12-year-old Eagle Rare expression be a massive win for affordable bourbon fans? Or just another W.L. Weller 12 in the making. Buffalo Trace may have just given bourbon fans the best news of the year a little less than halfway through 2025. The maker of some of the most prestigious bourbons on the planet, including Blantons, W.L. Weller, and Pappy Van Winkle, to name a few, just announced a new 12-year-old version of Eagle Rare Bourbon that's bottled at an even slightly higher 95 proof than its 10-year-old, 90 proof sibling. Better yet, the new offering will be a permanent part of the Eagle Rare lineup, and its MSRP is just $50. It's the kind of sign long-standing bourbon drinkers have hoped (and may even prayed) would come for years now, whether or not they loved or hated Eagle Rare's low-rye, low-proof bourbon. That's because, in many ways, this launch could be the clearest indicator yet that a decades-long expansion effort by Buffalo Trace may finally return the American whiskey market to some semblance of sanity, at least from a consumer's POV. After nearly two decades of explosive and unprecedented growth helped fuel a maddening spiral of bourbon availability struggles and price hikes, a release of this magnitude suggests the bourbon market might finally return to earth. In 2015, Buffalo Trace kicked off a 1.2 billion dollar expansion effort. The timing of the move was interesting. On one hand, just a year earlier, a bevy of headlines from outlets ranging from Time to Esquire and Business Insider warned of 'the great bourbon shortage.' And they weren't making this up out of thin air. Maker's Mark stoked alarm and outrage in 2013 when it announced it would reduce the ABV content of its beloved bourbon by 3% to better stretch its existing supplies in the face of massive global demand. But that decision was quickly reversed in the face of immediate fan blowback. In an email on the topic, company executives Rob Samuels and Bill Samuels Jr. explained that they had investigated 'all possible solutions,' adding, 'fact is, demand for our bourbon is exceeding our ability to make it, which means we're running very low on supply.' Knob Creek stripped the age statements from some of its popular bottles for several years in a similar strategic move, though they subsequently returned in 2019 and 2021. Buffalo Trace also made a series of public statements on the topic, starting with a 2013 comment from former marketing director Kris Comstock that 'there could be temporary product shortages, even on favorites like Buffalo Trace and Eagle Rare.' He later added that 'this announcement is not meant as some sort of scare tactic to get people hoarding bourbon.' The message was essentially the same a year later in 2014, when the company stated again that there was 'no end in sight' for its Bourbon shortages in May of 2014. Other outlets, like The Guardian, however, claimed the fear was grossly exaggerated or at least overblown. On the other hand, the same year Buffalo Trace announced its expansion plans, Kentucky's bourbon inventory reached a 40-year high. 1.3 million new bourbon barrels were also filled in 2015, achieving a production high not reached since 1970. As such, it was natural to wonder if Buffalo Trace's big bet was potentially too much, too late. Five years after a new distribution center and bottling operation came online in 2015, the company's production began to ramp up dramatically. By 2022, Buffalo Trace had already increased its whiskey-making capacity by 50 percent thanks to '14 new barrel warehouses, 12 additional fermenters, additional cookers, a new cooling system,' according to company press statements. Within 12 months of that milestone, a new still house—complete with a duplicate of the brand's existing still, capable of producing up to 60,000 gallons a day—and other facilities also came online, effectively doubling Buffalo Trace's production yet again. 'This whiskey represents more than just time in the barrel—it's the result of years of dedication, innovation, and an unwavering commitment from our entire team. The investments we've made – in time, resources and effort – have allowed us to explore new possibilities in aging and flavor, and this release is a proud reflection of that journey.' – Buffalo Trace Master Distiller Harlen Wheatley 'We appreciate our fans' patience as we've been laying down the foundation to produce more American Whiskey than we ever have before,' said Sara Saunders, vice president of Buffalo Trace Distillery stated as part of a press release outlining the company's progress. By 2024, Buffalo Trace brand reps informed our team that 75 percent of the expansion project had been completed by March, and only the third and final phase remained. Between 2022 and 2024, Buffalo Trace brought another five new aging warehouses online, all of which were already at their full capacity of 58,800 barrels a piece, alongside other key upgrades. The $1.2 billion 10-year project was finally completed at the beginning of this year, which netted a 150% increase in Buffalo Trace's output capacity. However, in the decades since construction began, the bourbon market and American whiskey, more broadly, have also downshifted dramatically. Many legacy media and industry-focused outlets have noted that bourbon demand is slowing down. In 2023, Tequila also officially overtook American whiskey as the second most valuable spirit category in the US, behind vodka. Many of the industry's leading Master distillers consider somewhere between 8 to 14 years to be the ideal age range for bourbon, which is why it's traditionally one of the market's most competitive and beloved segments. Buffalo Trace-produced bottles have also dominated this space over the last several decades. Combined with layoff announcements from major industry forces like Brown-Forman and MGP, Buffalo Trace's leadership has likely lost sleep over how to optimally leverage its newfound production might over the next decade and beyond. Given the time requirements for bourbon maturation, the company's precise plans, whatever they may be, will take years to realize fully. While there is technically no minimum age for bourbon, most bottles qualify as straight bourbons, meaning they've aged in new charred oak barrels for at least two years. So-called Bottled-in-Bond bourbons must age for double that time, and many of Buffalo Trace's premium offerings contain whiskey that's aged for far longer than that. Still, the brand's actions over the last few years hint at Buffalo Trace's long-term aspirations. One way to quickly bring new surpluses of whiskey to market is to skip the loftier production requirements demanded by legally protected whiskey classes like bourbon. In 2024, the distillery launched Traveller Whiskey, which was developed in partnership with country music icon Chris Stapleton. It's a blended whiskey and technically not a bourbon. However, Buffalo Trace produces and distills some portion of the whiskey blend alongside other distillers inside Buffalo Trace's parent company, Sazerac's portfolio. By introducing Eagle Rare 12 for an MSRP of $50 before local taxes and fees, Buffalo Trace appears to be making its boldest move yet to offer class-leading whiskeys at prices that competitors can't afford to match. Yet despite its opaque recipe and $40 MSRP, Traveller's is far from a crappy cash grab, at least relative to other whiskeys in its class. The bottle has scored numerous industry awards. We also named it one of the 100 most important products of 2024. This year, Buffalo Trace also announced its plans to add a new premium expression of E.H. Taylor bourbon to its ultra-prestigious Antique Collection lineup, which, while not a volume play at all, was one indicator that the distillery's stocks of older, premium bourbon were finally loosening up. By introducing Eagle Rare 12 for an MSRP of $50 before local taxes and fees, Buffalo Trace appears to be making its boldest move yet to offer class-leading whiskeys at prices that competitors can't afford to match. Many of the industry's leading Master distillers consider somewhere between 8 to 14 years to be the ideal age range for bourbon, which is why it's traditionally one of the market's most competitive and beloved segments. Buffalo Trace-produced bottles have also dominated this space over the last several decades. However, very few distillers today offer a 12-year-old bourbon or even Tennesee Whiskeys as part of their permanent core lineup—presumably because of longstanding supply constraints. And all but one sell a 12-year-old version for an MSRP of just $50 today. Van Winkle Special Reserve 12-year-old, which Buffalo Trace has also distilled for years, has an MSRP of $150 now, though buying it for less than $800 could still be considered a steal. Knob Creek 12 has an MSRP of $60. The price of Jack Daniel's premium 12-year-old bottling has hovered between $85 and $95, depending on the year, though it's part of an annual limited-release series. 1792 Aged Twelve Years Bourbon technically matches Eagle Rare 12's $50 MSRP, but it's also a limited edition, and typically sells for double that cost on secondary markets. Buffalo Trace's leadership clearly understands the current bourbon market and Eagle Rare 12's unique position within it. Master Distiller Harlen Wheatley shared in a statement alongside the new release, 'This whiskey represents more than just time in the barrel—it's the result of years of dedication, innovation, and an unwavering commitment from our entire team. The investments we've made – in time, resources and effort – have allowed us to explore new possibilities in aging and flavor, and this release is a proud reflection of that journey.' Buffalo Trace's leadership clearly understands the current bourbon market and Eagle Rare 12's unique position within it. Andrew Duncan, Global Brand Director at Buffalo Trace, was even blunter in his assessment in the same statement. 'When it was introduced, Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey brought higher quality standards to whiskey around the world; now, Eagle Rare pushes the bounds of age stating excellence in Bourbon.' But while everything about Eagle Rare 12 sounds great on paper, jaded whiskey fans will likely wait and see before judging the new bourbon's long-term market impact, and for good reason. After all, even putting Van Winkle Special Reserve 12-year-old aside, Buffalo Trace's history of producing 12-year-old bourbon at a high enough volume to keep price gouging at bay has been rocky, at least over the last 20 years, as evidenced by W.L. Weller 12. The now cult-favorite wheated bourbon once had an MSRP as low as $20, but it now costs between $60 and $70. However, due to a loose affiliation with Pappy Van Winkle and a consistently limited supply, it essentially retails for at least double that price. As such, Eagle Rare 12's reception and legacy will ultimately depend on how much stock Buffalo Trace is capable of and/or willing to bottle to keep supply aligned with demand. As such, Eagle Rare 12's reception and legacy will ultimately depend on how much stock Buffalo Trace is capable of and/or willing to bottle to keep supply aligned with demand. That said, even if supplies are limited right out of the gate due to the nature of Buffalo Trace's production ramp-up, there's still hope that further supply increases in the years to come may make Eagle Rare 12 easier to find at your local liquor store in the years ahead. According to Buffalo Trace, the new expression will be released to select retailers, bars, and restaurants across the United States beginning June 2025.
Atlantic
33 minutes ago
- Atlantic
The Newspaper That Hired ChatGPT
For more than 20 years, print media has been a bit of a punching bag for digital-technology companies. Craigslist killed the paid classifieds, free websites led people to think newspapers and magazines were committing robbery when they charged for subscriptions, and the smartphone and social media turned reading full-length articles into a chore. Now generative AI is in the mix—and many publishers, desperate to avoid being left behind once more, are rushing to harness the technology themselves. Several major publications, including The Atlantic, have entered into corporate partnerships with OpenAI and other AI firms. Any number of experiments have ensued—publishers have used the software to help translate work into different languages, draft headlines, and write summaries or even articles. But perhaps no publication has gone further than the Italian newspaper Il Foglio. For one month, beginning in late March, Il Foglio printed a daily insert consisting of four pages of AI-written articles and headlines. Each day, Il Foglio 's top editor, Claudio Cerasa, asked ChatGPT Pro to write articles on various topics—Italian politics, J. D. Vance, AI itself. Two humans reviewed the outputs for mistakes, sometimes deciding to leave in minor errors as evidence of AI's fallibility and, at other times, asking ChatGPT to rewrite an article. The insert, titled Il Foglio AI, was almost immediately covered by newspapers around the world. 'It's impossible to hide AI,' Cerasa told me recently. 'And you have to understand that it's like the wind; you have to manage it.' Now the paper—which circulates about 29,000 copies each day, in addition to serving its online readership—plans to embrace AI-written content permanently, issuing a weekly AI section and, on occasion, using ChatGPT to write articles for the standard paper. (These articles will always be labeled.) Cerasa has already used the technology to generate fictional debates, such as an imagined conversation between a conservative and a progressive cardinal on selecting a new pope; a review of the columnist Beppe Severgnini's latest book, accompanied by Severgnini's AI-written retort; the chatbot's advice on what to do if you suspect you're falling in love with a chatbot ('Do not fall in love with me'); and an interview with Cerasa himself, conducted by ChatGPT. Il Foglio 's AI work is full-fledged and transparently so: natural and artificial articles, clearly divided. Meanwhile, other publications provide limited, or sometimes no, insight into their usage of the technology, and some have even mixed AI and human writing without disclosure. As if to demonstrate how easily the commingling of AI and journalism can go sideways, just days after Cerasa and I first spoke, at least two major regional American papers published a spread of more than 50 pages titled 'Heat Index,' which was riddled with errors and fabrications; a freelancer who'd contributed to the project admitted to using ChatGPT to generate at least some portions of the text, resulting in made-up book titles and expert sources who didn't actually exist. The result was an embarrassing example of what can result when the technology is used to cut corners. With so many obvious pitfalls to using AI, I wanted to speak with Cerasa to understand more about his experiment. Over Zoom, he painted an unsettling, if optimistic, portrait of his experience with AI in journalism. Sure, the technology is flawed. It's prone to fabrications; his staff has caught plenty of them, and has been taken to task for publishing some of those errors. But when used correctly, it writes well—at times more naturally, Cerasa told me, than even his human staff. Still, there are limits. 'Anyone who tries to use artificial intelligence to replace human intelligence ends up failing,' he told me when I asked about the 'Heat Index' disaster. 'AI is meant to integrate, not replace.' The technology can benefit journalism, he said, 'only if it's treated like a new colleague—one that needs to be looked after.' The problem, perhaps, stems from using AI to substitute rather than augment. In journalism, 'anyone who thinks AI is a way to save money is getting it wrong,' Cerasa said. But economic anxiety has become the norm for the field. A new robot colleague could mean one, or three, or 10 fewer human ones. What, if anything, can the rest of the media learn from Il Foglio 's approach? Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity. Matteo Wong: In your first experiment with AI, you hid AI-written articles in your paper for a month and asked readers if they could detect them. How did that go? What did you learn? Claudio Cerasa: A year ago, for one month, every day we put in our newspaper an article written with AI, and we asked our readers to guess which article was AI-generated, offering the prize of a one-year subscription and a bottle of champagne. The experiment helped us create better prompts for the AI to write an article, and helped us humans write better articles as well. Sometimes an article written by people was seen as an article written by AI: for instance, when an article is written with numbered points—first, second, third. So we changed something in how we write too. Wong: Did anybody win? Cerasa: Yes, we offered a lot of subscriptions and champagne. More than that, we realized we needed to speak about AI not just in our newspaper, but all over the world. We created this thing that is important not only because it is journalism with AI, but because it combines the oldest way to do information, the newspaper, and the newest, artificial intelligence. Wong: How did your experience of using ChatGPT change when you moved from that original experiment to a daily imprint entirely written with AI? Cerasa: The biggest thing that has changed is our prompt. At the beginning, my prompt was very long, because I had to explain a lot of things: You have to write an article with this style, with this number of words, with these ideas. Now, after a lot of use of ChatGPT, it knows better what I want to do. When you start to use, in a transparent way, artificial intelligence, you have a personal assistant: a new person that works in the newspaper. It's like having another brain. It's a new way to do journalism. Wong: What are the tasks and topics you've found that ChatGPT is good at and for which you'd want to use it? And conversely, where are the areas where it falls short? Cerasa: In general, it is good at three things: research, summarizing long documents, and, in some cases, writing. I'm sure in the future, and maybe in the present, many editors will try to think of ways AI can erase journalists. That could be possible, because if you are not a journalist with enough creativity, enough reporting, enough ideas, maybe you are worse than a machine. But in that case, the problem is not the machine. The technology can also recall and synthesize far more information than a human can. The first article we put in the normal newspaper written with AI was about the discovery of a key ingredient for life on a distant planet. We asked the AI to write a piece on great authors of the past and how they imagined the day scientists would make such a discovery. A normal person would not be able to remember all these things. Wong: And what can't the AI do? Cerasa: AI cannot find the news; it cannot develop sources or interview the prime minister. AI also doesn't have interesting ideas about the world—that's where natural intelligence comes in. AI is not able to draw connections in the same way as intelligent human journalists. I don't think an AI would be able to come up with and fully produce a newspaper generated by AI. Wong: You mentioned before that there may be some articles or tasks at a newspaper that AI can already write or perform better than humans, but if so, the problem is an insufficiently skilled person. Don't you think young journalists have to build up those skills over time? I started at The Atlantic as an assistant editor, not a writer, and my primary job was fact-checking. Doesn't AI threaten the talent pipeline, and thus the media ecosystem more broadly? Cerasa: It's a bit terrifying, because we've come to understand how many creative things AI can do. For our children to use AI to write something in school, to do their homework, is really terrifying. But AI isn't going away—you have to educate people to use it in the correct way, and without hiding it. In our newspaper, there is no fear about AI, because our newspaper is very particular and written in a special way. We know, in a snobby way, that our skills are unique, so we are not scared. But I'm sure that a lot of newspapers could be scared, because normal articles written about the things that happened the day before, with the agency news—that kind of article, and also that kind of journalism, might be the past.
USA Today
44 minutes ago
- USA Today
Greenland isn't for sale. Despite Trump, it wants Americans to visit. Are they?
Greenland isn't for sale. Despite Trump, it wants Americans to visit. Are they? Special Report: As President Donald Trump vows to "get Greenland," direct flights from the U.S. are starting up for the first time. What kind of reception will Americans get? ILULISSAT, Greenland − Much like the luminous and shape-shifting ice sculptures that dominate every sightline in this craggy Arctic Circle town, Greenland's tourism industry is ever expanding, breaking off into new formations, floating past a window. And, for now, both tuning out President Donald Trump and preparing to host more Americans. How's that going to land − for everybody? In Ilulissat, Greenlandic for "icebergs," a new airport is being built for large transatlantic aircraft. Towering construction cranes dot the rocky promontory on which the town − population 5,000 − sits. Fishing boats and tour operators zip in and out of a busy harbor fronted by a state-of-the-art shrimp peeling and processing factory. There's a plan afoot for another new hotel that will look out over waters full of the seal, whale and narwhal that congregate around Qeqertarsuaq, or Disko Island, the world's largest island's largest island. But while Trump himself has not traveled to Ilulissat despite his pledge to "get Greenland" from Denmark for national security reasons, more Americans almost certainly will. On June 14 − Trump's birthday − United Airlines will begin direct U.S.-Greenland flights, making it far easier for them to visit a place their president says the U.S. will acquire "one way or the other." Never mind that Greenlanders and their ultimate political masters in Copenhagen have made it clear they aren't buying whatever it is Trump is selling when it comes to his Greenland overtures. 'One way or the other': Five ways Trump's Greenland saga could play out "We don't care where our visitors come from," said Ulrik Amdi Sørensen, manager of Hotel Arctic, a sprawling site with lodgings, two restaurants and conference rooms perched on a hillside with views of Ilulissat Icefjord. The icefjord is a UNESCO world heritage area, meaning it has cultural, historical or scientific significance that gives it legal protections. It is the "sea mouth" of Sermeq Kujalleq, a glacier in western Greenland about 155 miles north of the Arctic Circle. Its ice sheet produces around 10% of Greenland's icebergs. As far as glaciers with reputations go, it has one: In 1912, an iceberg chunk "calved" from the face of Sermeq Kujalleq drifted out to sea, appeared out of the mist and slammed into the Titanic on its disastrous maiden voyage. Greenland gets closer to the U.S. United's flights will go to Nuuk, Greenland's capital, about 350 miles south of Ilulissat. Nuuk opened its own expanded international airport in 2024, enabling Trump's eldest son, Don Jr., to land there on his father's "Trump Force One" private plane for a day trip in January. That visit unsettled locals because of the president's Greenland comments. They were also offended when they saw members of Donald Trump Jr.'s entourage hand out $100 bills, food and "Make Greenland Great Again" hats to homeless people to lure them to an event. A few months later, Vice President JD Vance and his wife Usha confined a planned Greenland visit to a remote Arctic military base after it became apparent Greenlanders didn't want to speak with them − not least because they arrived during an election. Usha Vance's Greenland adventure: Why it got derailed by a dogsled race across ice and snow However, Ilulissat and its icebergs are Greenland's biggest tourist draw. Scientists classify their shapes as "tabular," "sloping," "pinnacled," "dry-docked" and "blocky," among other descriptors. To the untrained eye, they resemble anything from a pancake to a herd of elephants; from a spiky skyscraper to a blob of the classic Italian dessert tiramisu. Icebergs can be blue, yellow, black. They can even look like striped candies. Like characterizing an iceberg, it's difficult to precisely pinpoint how many Americans are currently traveling to Greenland. According to Visit Greenland, the territory's tourist agency, about 145,000 tourists overall visited in 2024, the majority of them arriving on large cruise ships. Most stay ashore for only a few hours at a time. In 2024, just over 4,700 travelers from North America stayed overnight in a hotel room in Greenland. What's clear, said Tanny Por, who directs Visit Greenland's international marketing and promotion efforts, is that Greenland has received a lot more attention "for many different reasons in the past six months." She cited the new airports, United's direct flights and also coming direct flights from Copenhagen to Nuuk with Scandinavian Airlines. Distorted maps have misled you: Greenland isn't as big as you think Por said it was too early to gauge how Trump's interest in Greenland has impacted bookings for Americans. Still, Hotel Arctic's Sørensen estimated just 5% of guests at his hotel in a typical year come from the U.S. He expected that to increase because of the new flights to Nuuk, Ilulissat's airport expansion scheduled to finish in 2026 and because, well, because Trump has effectively helped put Greenland "on the map." Sørensen also acknowledged the attention Trump has brought to Greenland, shaking its relative Arctic anonymity, is weighing on the minds of some of his guests. "Most of the Americans who have stayed with us this year have immediately told us when they arrive: 'We don't support Trump,'" he said. Pentagon's Greenland oversight: US military on verge of shifting it, reports says In Nuuk, a boutique named Outdoor Greenland recently sold out of a T-shirt it with the phrase 'Greenland Is Not for Sale' emblazoned on it. On a recent afternoon, a young woman working in the store said the item proved hugely popular with tourists and Greenlanders alike. "I guess they served their purpose," said Nora Gelskov. Trump pledges to 'get Greenland' as direct flights from US start As Trump vows to "get Greenland," direct flights from the U.S. are starting. What reception will Americans get? A visitor in disconnected Greenland Greenland's cities, towns and settlements are not connected by road. The only way for tourists to move around is by boat, plane or helicopter. If visitors make it to Ilulissat during Greenland's summer season, which typically runs June through August, they will find a place that, to outsiders, retains the feel of a rugged frontier town. Workers in overalls walk down dusty streets that turn into dusty tracks before petering out to nowhere. Houses are made of wood and painted bright shades of red, yellow or blue. They are built directly on top of rocky terrain, with their waste and water pipes exposed. There's no high school. 'Buy us!': Greenlanders shocked, intrigued, bewildered by Trump zeal for Arctic territory Zion's Church, erected in the late 18th century and once the island's largest building, is now probably the most photographed church in all Greenland. On a recent afternoon − Or was it 3 am? It's hard to sell when the sun never sets − its steep-pitched roof and dark-brown wooden facade solemnly stared out at Disko Bay's glittering icebergs. A reporter counted three supermarkets in Ilulissat. In addition to Danish chocolates, meat and dairy products, and a sprinkling of well-traveled summer fruit, they sell power tools, car oil and various gear that looked like it could prove useful on a seal, whale or caribou hunt, a normal feature of life for Greenland's Inuit communities. They make up almost 90% of the island's 57,000 inhabitants. Half say it's a bad idea: What Americans think of Trump's plans to acquire Greenland Greenland: icebergs vs. dogs Still, if icebergs dictate Ilulissat's visual landscape, dogs are in charge of how it sounds. (Icebergs also make noise.) Dog sledding has been a part of the Greenlandic identity for thousands of years. In winter, dogs are used for hunting, fishing and to travel between settlements. In Ilulissat, there's an estimated 2,200 husky-type sled dogs − nearly one for every two humans. Throughout the day − also at night − Ilulissat's dogs could be heard howling, barking in a squeaky high pitch and generally carrying on from the fields and hillsides on the town's edge where they are kept. They sat around, frolicked, snoozed, wondered about their next meal, and licked pups or themselves. "People ask us: Why do you still keep dogs?" said Flemming Lauritzen, who set up Arctic Living Ilulissat, a dog sledding center that runs tours and educational activities, with his wife Ane Sofie. "I tell them: 'Imagine sledding into the mountains in December,'" he said. "'It's dark. A full moon. Newly fallen snow. Maybe the Northern Lights are there. When you arrive at your spot, you overlook the whole ice sheet shining like a sugar bowl. The only sound is of the dogs' breath. Magical.'" Head of Greenland base fired: The crime? Criticizing Vance's trip and Trump's plans Dog sledding in retreat Dog sledding, according to the Lauritzens, is also slowly vanishing. Among the threats: fuel-efficient snowmobiles; a changing climate melting the ice and shortening the season; and infrastructure development for tourists, which erodes available land where the dogs are kept. Thirty years ago, there were 30,000 sled dogs in Greenland. Now there's half that. "We are not opposed to tourists. The people that fly in, they're not the problem − Americans or anyone else," said Ane Sofie, speaking inside a cosy wooden cabin the couple built to receive visitors at the center. On the walls were maps detailing their expeditions and traditional Greenlandic cold-weather garments made from animal hide and fur. Outside, about 30 of their dogs munched on dinner: fish scraps. "It's the cruise ships," she added. "People get dropped off in our little town, buy a lot of the food and goods in the supermarkets, which means people like us often can't get the essentials we need." Destination Greenland? Jens Lauridsen is the CEO of Greenland Airports, the government-owned operator of the territory's 13 airports. After United announced in October 2024 it would be flying to Nuuk, Lauridsen was quoted in a company press release saying the move would "significantly enhance Greenland's visibility on the global stage." Lauridsen was almost right. Trump got there first. He has done much of the heavy lifting. Why Trump wants Greenland: military security, rare minerals, trade routes, for starters In an interview, Lauridsen said he is confident the United flights would "grow tourism from North America" despite the recent political backdrop. He believes most Greenlanders "see a benefit from tourism," though it represents a relatively small part of Greenland's economy compared to fisheries and a grant from Denmark, the largest inputs. "The question is how fast it develops," he said. Senior members of Greenland's government, tired or perhaps just wary, of talking about Trump's Greenland obsession declined an opportunity to comment. But Kuno Fencker, an opposition lawmaker who wants Greenland to become independent from Denmark as soon as the conditions are right, said he believes the government made a mistake by choosing not to expand of all Greenland's airports, focusing only on the ones in Nuuk and Ilulissat. "Of course we want more tourists. We also want to diversify our economy," he said. A spokesperson for United declined to reveal how well its flights to Nuuk have sold. 'A real Danish beer': The Americans are already here USA TODAY came across few Americans in Greenland over the course of a week. One couple, off a cruise ship they boarded in Baltimore, made a brief stop at a Nuuk hotel because they wanted to get a "real Danish beer." Another, from Oregon, made a last-minute decision to fly to Nuuk from Iceland, where they had been vacationing. Both couples said they found the scenery stunning, Greenlanders polite and friendly, and thought many Americans would agree. However, they wondered if recent geopolitics might dissuade some potential visitors. Greenland's a No: What territories has the U.S. purchased? 'Yeah I don't know. Maybe' In one sense, Americans have already made their mark in Greenland. So have Jamaicans. On a recent day, Arnaq Bourup Egede was at work in an Ilulissat store called "Malibu," named after the strip of beaches near Los Angeles. Malibu the store sells a Greenland-designed urban-and-sports-wear label called "Bolt Lamar," a joining of the names of Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt and U.S. musician Kendrick Lamar. "Yeah. I don't know. Maybe," Egede said in response to a reporter's question about whether she wanted more American tourists to show up in Greenland, and whether she viewed them as a boost, a burden or neither. In terms of land mass, Greenland is enormous, equivalent to three Texases. It's also a small place. Egede plays for Greenland's women's national soccer team when she's not working in the store. Her brother is Greenland's former prime minister, Múte Bourup Egede. Egede paused. She thought about the question some more. She likes reggae music. A large picture of the Jamaican star Bob Marley leaned on an upper shelf near the register. Bob Marley and the Wailers' 1977 song "Waiting in Vain" played on the stereo. "I'm not against American tourists," Egede finally said. She added that there were other branches of the business she worked in spread across Greenland's cities. They were called "California," "Miami" and "Alaska." Kim Hjelmgaard in an international correspondent for USA TODAY. Follow him on Bluesky, Instagram and LinkedIn. Contributing: Jennifer Borresen
