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US President Donald Trump addresses delegates at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, January 23 2025. Picture: REUTERS/YVES HERMAN
US President Donald Trump addresses delegates at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, January 23 2025. Picture: REUTERS/YVES HERMAN

Davos — US President Donald Trump told business leaders at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos he wants to lower global oil prices, interest rates and taxes, and warned they face tariffs if they make their products abroad.

“I’ll demand that interest rates drop immediately. And likewise, they should be dropping all over the world,” Trump said via video conference on Thursday.

He said he expected the Federal Reserve to listen to him on interest rates and that he would consider speaking to Fed chair Jerome Powell about the matter. 

“I’m also going to ask Saudi Arabia and Opec to bring down the cost of oil.”

The remarks were the first of Trump’s four-day-old presidency to global business and political leaders at a time when markets are on edge over his plans for broad tariffs on imported goods.

Oil prices declined as Trump spoke, while the euro dipped and the dollar swung between gains and losses against a basket of currencies.

Some of his harshest criticism was reserved for traditional US allies Canada and the EU, which he threatened again with new tariffs. He berating their import policies and blaming them for the US’s trade deficit with these partners.

“One thing we’re going to be demanding is we’re going to be demanding respect from other nations. Canada. We have a tremendous deficit with Canada. We’re not going to have that anywhere,” he said.

President Donald Trump remotely addresses the World Economic Forum in Davos on Jan. 23.

Trump listed the rapid changes he had made since his swearing-in on Monday.

He also sharply criticised his predecessor Joe Biden and policies that have dominated at Davos for years, from climate change policies to diversity. Former US secretary of state John Kerry, who served under Biden, visibly winced as he listened.

Trump promised to reduce inflation with a mix of tariffs, deregulation and tax cuts along with his crackdown on illegal immigration and commitment to making the US a hub of artificial intelligence, cryptocurrencies and fossil fuels. He also criticised levels of taxation in the EU.

“The US has the largest amount of oil and gas of any country on Earth, and we’re going to use it,” he said. “Not only will this reduce the cost of virtually all goods and services, it will make the US a manufacturing superpower.”

Trump told global business leaders they should manufacture products in the US to avoid import tariffs and enjoy low tax rates. “My message to every business in the world is very simple: come make your product in America and we will give you among the lowest taxes of any nation on earth,” he said.

The Davos forum gave a handful of business executives an opportunity to publicly question the president on issues that affect their businesses, or in some cases their specific investments, projects and interests.

Trump repeated a string of familiar falsehoods: that the US had the cleanest air and water during his first term; that he won by a large mandate in the US; that there was a “Green New Deal” in the US that he had repealed.

The business leaders included Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan and Blackstone Group CEO Stephen Schwarzman as well as TotalEnergies CEO Patrick Pouyanne, WEF CEO Borge Brende and WEF founder Klaus Schwab.

More than a thousand executives, officials and others from around the world filled the main hall at the convention for Trump’s speech, including Polish President Andrzej Duda.

Business leaders were eager to hear more about Trump’s concrete plans on tariffs after he threatened broad import duties and suggested they could start on February 1.

He has moved quickly to crack down on immigration, expand domestic energy production and has threatened to impose steep tariffs on the EU, China, Mexico and Canada.

Trump has also withdrawn the US from the World Health Organisation and the Paris Agreement on climate. He says he will rename the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America, though other countries may not adopt the new name. He has also threatened to take back the Panama Canal.

He has pardoned more than 1,500 supporters who attacked the US Capitol on January 6 2021, in a failed effort to overturn his 2020 election loss, drawing outrage from legislators and police whose lives were put at risk.

Trump is also moving to dismantle diversity programmes in the US government and is pressuring the private sector to do so as well. That has left some in Davos searching for new words to describe workplace practices that they say are essential to their businesses.

Later on Thursday, Trump signed an order to create a cryptocurrency working group, fulfilling a campaign promise after he courted cash from digital asset companies pledging to be a “crypto president”.

He also signed an order related to the declassification of files on the assassinations of former president John F Kennedy, Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr, an aide said.

• On Thursday, a federal judge blocked the Trump’s administration from implementing an order curtailing the right to automatic birthright citizenship in the US, calling it “blatantly unconstitutional”.

Seattle-based US district judge John Coughenour issued a temporary restraining order at the urging of four Democratic-led states — Washington, Arizona, Illinois and Oregon — preventing the administration from enforcing it.

Trump had signed the order on Monday.

The judge, an appointee of Republican former president Ronald Reagan, dealt the first legal setback to the hardline policies on immigration that are a centrepiece of Trumps second term as president. 

Reuters

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