"When the United States grows, so does the world”
ADVERTISEMENTDonald Trump has delivered his highly anticipated speech in Davos.
“As president of the United States, I will always put America first. Just like the leaders of other countries should put their country first also. But America first does not mean America alone. When the United States grows so does the world.”
This follows the line of what we have already heard from the US President a number of time’s and his message that America is open for Business came as no surprise.
But things got a little more heated when Donald Trump criticised the media.
“As a businessman I was always treated really well by the press. It wasn’t until I became a politician that I realised how nasty, how mean, how vicious, and how fake the press can be.”
Keir Simmons from NBC was in the audience in Davos.
“Well of the years that I’ve been here at the economic forum, I’ve rarely heard that very civilised audience laugh at a speech and very rarely heard them boo a speech. And we heard both there. Laughter when the president said he didn’t understand why he gets so much media attention and boos when he mentioned fake news. This was Donald Trump, the diplomat, reaching out to people, sticking very closely to the prepared text that had been written well ahead of this event. The problem of course, while he says that ‘I’m looking after America and every country should look after itself’, history tells us that when countries do just look after themselves, it can end very badly for the world. Having said that, there are a lot of people in there, billionaires, big company owners, who are earning a lot of money as a result of the Donald Trump tax cuts. So there was a warm reception at least from some of the room.”
Trump claimed credit for the run-up in stocks and economic growth that has occurred in his first year in office. As he spoke, official figures suggested growth in the US economy was weaker than expected: 2.6 per cent in the fourth quarter of the year, while the officials had focused on a 3 percent target.
Kenneth Rogoff, the former IMF Chief Economist, was damning of the US president’s unpredictability.
“I think with him, we’re much more concerned about random behaviour, that he just changes his mind at night. He does something that sparks a problem. I mean, sometimes the world is a little used to it, so he says something a little crazy, and people say ‘well that’s Donald Trump’, ‘just wait a day, it will go away’. But the question – do we have a safe pair of hands at the wheel of the global economy, I thing you’d have to say ‘no we don’t.”
European political leaders were not in the room during the speech. Angela Merkel, Emmanuel Macron and Paolo Gentiloni addressed the world economic forum on Wednesday, all warning against protectionism.
Euronews asked the European Commissioner for Economic, Financial Affairs, Taxation and Customs, Pierre Moscovici what he thinks of US President Davos Debut and his “America First” agenda.”
“First I welcome the fact that Mr Trump is here in Davos. We need to defend our own way and the European way is different than Trump’s way. We are attached to multi-lateralism. We refuse protectionism. We are fighting against climate change. And we must be proud of that and that’s why we must be offensive in promoting this European way. He says America first, I don’t say Europe first, but I love the European way. I say we must respond to America first by the European way.”
