ANALYSIS
Trump in Davos: 'I love Europe, but it's not heading in the right direction'
The president ruled out the use of force to take Greenland, although he insisted that it must become U.S.-owned. He also touched on Venezuela, Ukraine and the Federal Reserve, among other topics.
Trump at Davos 2026
"I love Europe and I want to see Europe go good, but it's not heading in the right direction," President Donald Trump asserted Wednesday at the World Economic Forum. The president arrived amidst growing tensions with allied European countries over Greenland.
"Certain places in Europe are not even recognizable," he maintained and recommended to those, whom he said he did not want to name so as not to generate disputes, that they could improve by "following what we're doing [in the United States]." In that sense, Trump listed achievements of the first year of his second term, in his words, "Growth like ... perhaps no country has ever seen before."
"I don’t have to use force," Trump said about Greenland in the most anticipated moment of his speech. "I don’t want to use force. I won’t use force," he insisted. However, he stressed that his government must take possession of the island as a matter of national security: "All the U.S. is asking for is a place called Greenland."
He then called for the start of "immediate negotiations" to transfer ownership of the island. He accompanied the call with new warnings to Europe, recalling the new tariffs he announced for eight NATO countries starting in February.
Trump's full speech:
World
Tension in Davos over Greenland: Macron calls for aiming EU 'trade bazooka' at US
Santiago Ospital
Highlights of Trump's speech
- Ukraine: "If they don’t get this done, they are stupid," Trump said about a peace agreement between Ukrainian President,Volodymyr Zelensky, and his counterpart and enemy in the war, Russian President Vladimir Putin. Trump assured that they had reached a point where a deal was possible. He also said he would meet later with Zelensky, although he later corrected himself and said the meeting would be Thursday.
- Jerome Powell: "He was just fine for the other side," he said in a new attack on the Federal Reserve chairman. The Republican has time and again criticized Powell for not lowering interest rates. The Justice Department launched an investigation against the Fed chairman days ago. This Tuesday, the president celebrated that Powell's term ends in May: "We're going to have somebody [new, which] that's great."
- Venezuela: "Venezuela is going to make more money in the next six months than they've made in the last 20 years," the president promised about the South American country. Not only will Venezuela become rich, he said: several American oil companies, he affirmed, joined the plan to exploit Venezuelan reserves. He also celebrated the cooperation of Nicolás Maduro's vice president, Delcy Rodríguez, assuring that "the leadership of the country has been very good."
- Energy: "We are now into the world of nuclear energy," he said as he celebrated plans for nuclear energy production. He especially highlighted his administration's permits to large companies to generate their own nuclear plants, assuring that he himself had come up with the idea. At this point, he launched one of his harshest criticisms of European countries, assuring that they had been carried away by the "green scam": "Here in Europe we’ve seen the fate that the radical left tried to impose on America."
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