Donald Trump’s characteristically rambling Davos speech, mixing bravado with controversial claims, stood in stark contrast to Mark Carney’s, while his new Board of Peace has a distinct resemblance to the United Nations. I don’t usually watch Donald Trump’s speeches, they tend to be too rambling and unfocused for me. I prefer to read about them after the fact.
But I did watch Trump at Davos because the venue and the platform sort of demanded it – a global stage of the rich and powerful and often a harbinger of things to come for economies, businesses and global cooperation. And the speech was indeed rambling, but as conservative commentator and writer Rian Malan remarked to me, “fascinating to watch – bulldozer, hero, idiot, mafioso”. Did Trump say anything new?
Yes, he said one, and only one, new thing. He said he wouldn’t use force in Greenland. The markets recovered immediately from a panic crash.
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Almost everyone else sighed in relief. But really, this was not a new tactic; this is core Trump DNA. Go in with an over-the-top negotiating position and then settle for something less, but more than you would have got if you had started off with a rational offer.
This is a strategy he has repeated many times, in both his political life and private businesses. He did announce a new deal on Greenland, presumably something better than the US has now (probably more troops or bases or something similar), but details are still sketchy. The rest of the speech was old territory – America in the best shape it has ever been.
Due to me. The rest of the world relies on us for protection. They don’t pay us and they don’t even say thank you.
They are ungrateful. I am the best president ever. Biden is the worst.
I ended eight wars. Europe is failing – they are all a bunch of weak wussies. That “woman” who leads Switzerland rubbed me up the wrong way, so I tariffed her (it was ex-president of the Swiss Federation Karin Keller-Sutter).
No one is smarter than me. No one is stupider than everyone else. And, of course, a large smattering of insults – “you’d all be speaking German if it weren’t for the US”, which, unsurprisingly, put Germany’s back up.
It should be mentioned that Howard Lutnick, Trump’s commerce secretary, had reportedly also gone full Trump at a private dinner a few days earlier, being undiplomatic enough to cause European Central Bank president Christine Lagarde to walk out before dessert. In a discussion I had with a friend after Trump’s speech, we wondered whether, if you stripped away the Trump’s breathtaking narcissism and bluster and ramble, and put some of his ideas and observations into the mouth of a rational, articulate and quietly confident speaker, they would be taken more seriously, even to the point of making a convincing case. His views on Europe, while impolitic, are not out of bounds.
The entire union (plus the UK) has been reeling for decades from own goals, ranging from energy policy incoherence (including the catastrophic shutdown of nuclear energy in Germany), to the social friction of near-unchecked immigration policies that have allowed millions of immigrants to arrive with unfamiliar and inflexible cultures in tow, to complacency bordering on neglect in building a coherent EU defence capability. To say nothing of overregulation, decision-making sludge and innovation-crushing financial risk aversion.
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