Notes on President Trump's Davos Speech

Wednesday, January 21st, 2026

President Trump has arrived in Davos, Switzerland this morning, and presently at the podium for the annual World Economic Forum. This is, quite succinctly, the main even of this year’s forum — with strains among NATO countries following Trump’s declared will toward annexing Greenland, which is currently under NATO ally Denmark’s leadership.

Trump has spent most of the beginning part of his speech running down his list of perceived accomplishments, with quotes like “The U.S. is the economic engine of the planet” and “has undergone a transformation not seen in 100 years,” as well as proclaiming his first term and the first year of his second term as the “greatest in U.S. history.” In terms of Europe, the president said that it is “not heading in the right direction,” and that his tariff policy on foreign nations was to “pay for the damage they caused.”

Regarding Greenland — to which Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney declared “a rupture, not a transition” in global policy — Trump said, as he has many times in the past, that the U.S. “needs it for our security.” The president spent a decent amount of time in this speech decrying wind energy, calling windmills “losers” and China the manufacturer of wind turbines that “they sell to stupid people.” This would lead one to believe that Trump’s interest is less providing security to Greenland from forces such as Russia and China, and more looking to exploit its natural resources.

Trump didn’t mention NATO until after he had been speaking more than half an hour, and at that point he said he (or perhaps the U.S.) has been “treated very badly” by the post-WWII alliance. He credited himself with “doing more to help NATO than any… person.” In short, he’s not backing down from his rather pugnacious stance on annexing Denmark’s property. The president will likely be speaking here after the opening bell, but at this stage I would suggest there is, ultimately, nothing new to report.

Pre-markets jumped into positive territory across major indexes as soon as Trump declared his administration would not seek to take over Greenland by military force. Instead, he's pounding the table (not literally) on slapping new tariffs on countries opposed to the U.S. annexing the "big block of ice." The Dow is now +200 points, the S&P 500 is +20 and the Nasdaq +20. The small-cap Russell 2000 has sold off -20 points at this hour.

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