Trump Tells The World To Show Him The Money

President Donald Trump threatened widespread tariffs on foreign goods and said OPEC is partly to blame for the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine during a Thursday address to attendees at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

“My message to every business in the world is very simple: Come make your product in America and we’ll give you among the lowest taxes of any nation on earth,” Trump said. “If you don’t make your product in America, which is your prerogative, you will have to pay a tariff.”

Claiming that his inauguration had prompted “billions and billions, adding up to trillions” of dollars in outside investments in the U.S., Trump outlined a plan to strengthen the U.S. economy — currently growing faster than any other in the world — and reduce its debt. That included new initiatives to increase domestic oil and gas development and a threat to “demand that interest rates drop immediately,” an early indication he plans to challenge the independence of the Federal Reserve.

The remarks to business and political leaders from around the world, delivered remotely from the White House, were Trump’s first to an international audience since his swearing-in on Monday.

His speech painted the U.S. as a victim of foreign countries that haven’t negotiated fairly with Washington.

“We just want to be treated fairly with other nations,” Trump said, claiming “there’s hardly a nation in the world” that isn’t “tak[ing] advantage of us, and we can’t let that happen anymore.”

Trump pointed to Saudi Arabia’s reported interest in increasing its trade and investment by $600 billion as a move in the right direction. It appeared to be a quick response to Trump’s remarks on Monday urging nations who wanted his attention to pony up.

Trump told attendees he intended to ask Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, “who’s a fantastic guy, to round it out to 1 trillion.”

A day after he urged Russian President Vladimir Putin to negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine or face more economic pressure from the U.S., Trump blamed OPEC for not slashing oil prices sooner and suggested the group is “very responsible to a certain extent” for the three years of bloodshed.

“If the price came down, the Russia-Ukraine war would end immediately,” said Trump, who later reiterated his desire to negotiate a settlement.

“I would really like to meet with President Putin soon and get that war ended,” Trump said, explaining that he’s most concerned about ending the fighting. “It’s a carnage and we really have to stop that war.”

But he stopped short of promising the war would be resolved by next January’s summit in Davos, suggesting that the onus is on Putin to come to the negotiating table. “Ukraine is ready to make a deal,” he said.

He also expressed concerns about trade with the EU, a bloc that Trump claimed “treats us very badly, very unfairly.” While expressing his personal affinity for Europe, he complained about its VAT tax: “They don’t take our products and they don’t take our cars.”

Trump also complained about Canada, stating the U.S. “doesn’t need” its northern neighbor manufacturing its cars or sending it lumber or oil and gas. 

Trump bookended his prepared remarks, which were followed by moderated questions from Blackstone CEO Steven Schwarzman and other Davos attendees, with a recitation of his political triumph in the election and the flurry of actions he’s taken in his first four days in office, including the U.S. withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accord and his reversal of initiatives aimed at driving clean energy manufacturing.

As he did in his inaugural address, Trump trashed former President Joe Biden, who he said “totally lost control of the country” and he vowed to immediately fix the “disasters we’ve inherited from a totally inept group of people.”

Outlining his initial flood of executive actions, Trump boasted that he has “accomplished more in four days …than other administrations have in four years.”