Donald Trump has made a combative return to the world stage, accusing oil producers of prolonging the Ukraine war by failing to cut prices, and threatening tariffs on all US imports.
In a typically blustering online address to the World Economic Forum in Davos, the new president called on Saudi Arabia and the oil-producers’ cartel Opec to cut the cost of oil, in order to choke off revenues to Russia and halt the conflict in Ukraine.
“You’ve got to bring it down, which, frankly, I’m surprised they didn’t do before the election. That didn’t show a lot of love. Surprised by that,” Trump said. “If the price came down, the Russia-Ukraine war would end immediately.”
He added: “They should have done it long ago. They’re very responsible, actually, to a certain extent, for what’s taking place. Millions of lives are being lost.”
Trump also appeared to signal sweeping tariffs on imports to the US, warning: “If you don’t make your product in America, which is your prerogative, then very simply, you will have to pay a tariff – differing amounts, but a tariff.”
He repeated his call for Nato countries to dramatically increase defence spending, to reduce their dependence on the US.
“I’m also going to ask all Nato nations to increase defence spending to 5% of GDP, which is what it should have been years ago,” he said. He said lower levels of spending in recent years had been “unfair to the United States, but many, many things have been unfair for many years to the United States”.
Ranging widely across economic and foreign policy, Trump also put himself on a collision course with the Federal Reserve by urging it to cut interest rates “immediately” to bolster the US and global economy.
“I’ll demand that interest rates drop immediately. And likewise, they should be dropping all over the world. Interest rates should follow us all over,” he said.
In a speech heavily laced with grievances, Trump also complained about what he called an “unfair” trading relationship with China – which is expected to face the harshest tariffs.
“All we want is fairness. We just want a level playing field. We don’t want to take advantage. We’ve been having massive deficits with China. [Joe] Biden allowed it to get out of hand,” he said.
Tariffs are import taxes on goods, which are often passed on to consumers in higher prices. But Trump insisted his tariff policy would “direct hundreds of billions of dollars, and even trillions of dollars into our treasury to strengthen our economy and pay down debt”.
He has previously said he intends to levy the taxes on goods from Mexico, Canada and China, and is also considering penalising imports from the EU. But his latest remarks appeared to suggest they would be applied across the board.
Trump received a mixed response from Davos attenders, with some audibly grumbling when he promised to scrap equalities policies.
In response to carefully curated questions from business leaders, the US president denied his tariff policy could raise prices and contribute to inflation.
“I think [it will] actually bring down inflation. It’s going to bring up jobs. We’re going to have a lot of jobs. We’re going to have a lot of companies moving in,” he said.
Trump’s call for interest rate cuts are unlikely to go down well at the US central bank, which is independent of government.
The Fed’s chair, Jerome Powell, recently insisted he would not resign if Trump asked him to. The new US president has previously criticised the Fed’s governors as “boneheads”.
The bank reduced interest rates three times last year, but financial markets are expecting fewer than two cuts this year, with many analysts expecting tariffs to be inflationary. The next Fed meeting is on 29 January and could provoke an early clash with the White House.
During his 45 minutes on the big screen, the US president also made a series of false claims, including denying the reality of the climate crisis, and claiming “far more people” had died in Ukraine than had been reported.
Trump also went on a lengthy digression about the benefits of “good, clean coal”, and claimed to have discussed a radical nuclear disarmament deal with Moscow and Beijing in his first presidency.
He was appearing by video link in the vast hall at the conference centre in the Swiss ski resort, where discussions have been dominated all week by the potential impact of his policies on the global economy.
Earlier on Thursday, the populist Argentine president, Javier Milei, told the Davos audience that he saw himself and Trump as part of a growing band of world leaders standing up against “woke ideology”.
“Slowly an alliance is building between countries which want to be free,” he said, in a speech that also attacked feminism.
