President Donald Trump threatened business leaders with higher tariffs, vowed to “demand” decreased oil prices from OPEC and called for lower interest rates from central banks in a boast-filled address to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
Speaking by live video link from the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on the White House campus Thusday, Trump opened his remarks with a long recitation of purported accomplishments, boasts about his admiration’s record so far, and attacks on his predecessor, former president Joe Biden.
He said this week has been “a truly historic week in the United States” that represents the start of a “new golden age” for the U.S., and bragged of what he called a “massive mandate” from his electoral college win over former vice president Kamala Harris in last year’s election.
“What we’re doing, and going to do, my administration, is acting with unprecedented speed to fix the disasters we’ve inherited from a totally inept group of people and to solve every single crisis facing our country. This begins with confronting the economic chaos caused by the failed policies of the last administration,” said Trump, who bragged about having taken “rapid action to reverse each and every one of these radical left policies that created this calamity.”
Trump also said his administration was working on extending the tax cuts he enacted during his first term and expanding them. He promised business leaders “the lowest taxes of any nation on Earth” while threatening them with tariffs if they don’t bring manufacturing back to the US.
“If you don’t make your product in America, which is your prerogative, then, very simply, you will have to pay a tariff, differing amounts, but a tariff which will direct hundreds of billions of dollars, and even trillions of dollars into our treasury to strengthen our economy and pay down debt,” he said.
Trump vowed to “demand that interest rates drop immediately” both in the U.S. and “all over the world,” even though he has no authority to order the U.S. Federal Reserve — or any other country’s central bank — to lower rates.
Continuing, the president said he would ask Saudi Arabia and OPEC to lower oil prices and suggested that lower costs would bring an end to the three-year-old Russian war against Ukraine.
“You got to bring it down, which, frankly, I’m surprised they didn’t do before the election. That didn’t show a lot of love by them not doing it. I was a little surprised by that if the price came down, the Russia-Ukraine war would end immediately. Right now the price is high enough that that war will continue. You got to bring down the oil price. You can end that war. They should have done it long ago,” he said.
He added that the oil-producing nations, in his view, were responsible for the continuation of the war and the “millions of lives” lost on both sides and told attendees that he “really would like to be able to meet” with Russian President Vladimir Putin “soon” and “get that war ended.”
“That’s not from the standpoint of economy or anything else. It’s from the standpoint of millions of lives are being wasted. Beautiful young people are being shot in the battlefield.” he continued as he went on a long, drawn-out tangent in which he told Davos attendees that the death toll has been so severe in Ukraine because of what he called the “very flat land” there.
“The bullet goes, there’s no there’s no hiding, and a bullet, the only thing going to stop the bullet is a human body. And you have to see, I’ve seen pictures of what’s taken place. It’s a carnage. And we really have to stop that war. That war is horrible,” he added.
The president’s vow to demand lower prices from OPEC and Saudi Arabia come just hours after he spoke to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman, his first call with a foreign leader since taking office.
A White House readout of the call said the two leaders “discussed efforts to bring stability to the Middle East, bolster regional security, and combat terrorism” as well as Riyadh’s “international economic ambitions over the next four years” plus “trade and other opportunities to increase the mutual prosperity” of both countries.
His remarks on the fourth day of the annual event — which he attended twice during his first term — follow his blitz of executive actions muddying international relations, as he took aggressive anti-immigration actions, withdrew again from the Paris climate deals and stalled the ban of TikTok.
At his last appearance in Davos, Trump assailed what he called the “perennial prophets of doom” who want to “destroy our economy and wreck our country or eradicate our liberty” in remarks aimed at climate activists and what he perceives as a global progressive order against him.
“They are the heirs of yesterday’s foolish fortune tellers,” he said in his 2020 remarks.“They want to see us do badly, but we don’t let that happen,” Trump said at the time.
“These alarmists always demand the same thing: absolute power to dominate, transform and control every aspect of our lives. We will never let radical socialists destroy our economy, wreck our country or eradicate our liberty.”
Argentina’s President Javier Milei similarly railed against “wokeism” in his 2025 remarks at the conference.
Trump and world’s wealthiest man Elon Musk are leaders of an alliance “of all the nations that want to be free,” according to the far-right leader.
“The common denominator for the countries that are failing is the mental virus of woke ideology,” Milei said. “It is the great pandemic of our time that needs to be cured. It is the cancer that must be cut out.”
Trump’s remarks also follow a ceasefire agreement with Israel’s war in Gaza, which United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres credited to Trump’s assistance in the days before his inauguration.“
“The negotiations were dragging, dragging, dragging. And then, all of a sudden, it happened,” Guterres said at Davos. “I think there was a large contribution of robust diplomacy of — at the time — the president-elect of the United States.”
