By Echo Wang, Marwa Rashad and Trevor Hunnicutt
DAVOS, Switzerland (Reuters) -U.S. President Donald Trump demanded OPEC lower oil prices and the world drop interest rates in a speech to global business and political leaders and warned them they will face tariffs if they make their products anywhere but the U.S.
“I’ll demand that interest rates drop immediately. And likewise, they should be dropping all over the world,” Trump said via video to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Thursday. “I’m also going to ask Saudi Arabia and OPEC to bring down the cost of oil.”
The remarks, Trump’s first to global leaders in his four-day-old presidency, bolster the message that his second term will eschew free market norms inside the U.S. and out.
Despite robust comments on the tariffs he wants to put in place, he did not provide specifics at a time when markets are on edge over his plans.
Oil prices turned negative as Trump spoke, while the euro dipped and the U.S. dollar swung between gains and losses against a basket of foreign currencies. The benchmark of U.S. stocks rose to a near all-time high.
COMPLIMENTS AND CRITICISM
Trump spoke to about 3,000 Davos attendees, who cheered as Trump’s face appeared on the big screen. The president, a businessman whose first elected office was the White House, listed the rapid-fire changes he had made since his swearing-in on Monday that have upended U.S. government policies on diversity, climate change and immigration.
In a subsequent conversation with conference attendees including Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan and Blackstone Group (NYSE:) CEO Stephen Schwarzman, the U.S. president’s remarks veered between compliments and criticism.
At one point, Trump chided Moynihan and JPMorgan Chase (NYSE:) for not providing banking services to conservatives, without offering evidence or specifics of any wrongdoing. The banks were quick to issue statements saying that was untrue.
Moynihan ignored the accusation, instead complimenting Trump on the United States hosting the 2026 FIFA World Cup.
Trump’s address was an unusual moment, affording a handful of business executives an opportunity to publicly question the U.S. president on issues that affect their businesses, or in some cases their specific investments, projects and interests.
Some of his harshest criticism was reserved for traditional U.S. allies Canada and the European Union, who he threatened again with new tariffs, while berating them for allowing trade surpluses with the United States.
“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 anymore,” he said.
He sharply criticized his predecessor Joe Biden and policies that have dominated at Davos for years, from climate change to diversity. Former U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, who served under Biden, visibly winced as he listened.
Some Davos attendees were complimentary of his direct style afterward while others gently disagreed with his remarks.
“It’s not particularly strange that you want to foster growth in your own country,” Espen Barth Eide, minister of foreign affairs for Norway, told Reuters after Trump’s speech. “But of course, we believe that we are better off in the world of free trade, where we exchange goods and services openly.”
NUCLEAR ARMS AND PUTIN
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 United States a hub of artificial intelligence, cryptocurrencies and fossil fuels.
“The United States has the largest amount of oil and gas of any country on Earth, and we’re going to use it,” Trump said. “Not only will this reduce the cost of virtually all goods and services, it will make the United States a manufacturing superpower.”
He said he was seeking talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin on the war in Ukraine and wants Russia and China to work towards nuclear arms reductions.
Trump also repeated a string of familiar falsehoods – that the U.S. had the cleanest air and water during his first term and that there was a “Green New Deal” in the United States that he had repealed.
Since taking office, Trump has withdrawn the United States from the World Health Organization and the Paris climate agreement. 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 from Panama.
He has moved quickly to crack down on immigration, expand domestic energy production and has threatened to impose steep tariffs on the European Union, China, Mexico and Canada.
He also pardoned more than 1,500 supporters who attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in a failed effort to overturn his 2020 election loss, drawing outrage from lawmakers and police whose lives were put at risk.
Trump is moving to dismantle diversity programs within the U.S. 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.
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