The president of France, Emmanuel Macron, sought to flatter Donald Trump nine years ago treating “the Donald” to a Bastille Day military parade, which Trump later sought to emulate in Washington, D.C. Macron had a quite different message this year, with Trump’s high-profile bid to annex Greenland. Fracturing the NATO alliance has elicited strong emotions, and troop deployments AGAINST the United States.
Trump spoke for more than an hour to the Davos Forum on Wednesday, rehashing fantasies about how the 2020 presidential election was “fixed,” talking endlessly about himself, and memorably referring to Greenland as Iceland multiple times.
And he served up what has become known as a “taco” for “Trump Always Chickens Out.” Amidst the bluster, he first backed off from the threat to use military force — we already have a base in Greenland — and later retreated from his threats to slap tariffs on any country backing Denmark’s hegemony on the self-governing, ice-covered island. Instead, Trump said a “framework” for resolving the U.S. demands has been agreed upon.
This is not funny.
Trump has fractured an alliance that has kept a peace between global powers since World War II, just as the Forum annually draws diplomats, visionaries, activists, and heads of state to a Swiss village. It is an example of the interdependence that Trump, with his America First agenda, would deny.
The United States is the economic engine of the planet and “when America booms, the rest of the world booms,” Trump proclaimed, between denunciations of wind power and Rep. Ihan Omar, D-Minnesota. He also ridiculed our European allies, saying: “It is horrible what they have done to themselves.”
But consider what he has done to us. The Trump tariffs have generated a backlash felt in the price of food and clothing. The self-proclaimed “very stable genius” is not an economist. Nor is he a diplomat, decrying the Danes as “ungrateful“ for daring to hold onto a territory they first claimed 300 years ago.
The rest of the world, or at least U.S. allies, appear ready to treat Trump as a sideshow. Such was apparent when Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney took the podium at Davos. Carney spoke for only 17 minutes, gracefully jabbing at “a world of threats, coercions, and endless noise masquerading as strength.” The speech, personally drafted by the PM, did not mention Trump, but its meaning was clear.
“Canada has the values to which this world aspires,” said Carney. And, he added, Canada “has what the world wants.” It was at once a reference to strategic minerals, and a jab at Trump, who has said that Canada has nothing the U.S. needs.
The PM took a pair of additional jabs at Trump. “We are rapidly diversifying abroad,” he proclaimed. And as head of a “middle power,” he jabbed at those atop the pecking order, saying: “If we’re not at the table, we’re on the menu.” The “51st state” has a calm, deliberate leader who hasn’t yielded to pressure.
The Carney speech was underscored by the reasoning holding it together. Systemic change and cooperation comprise the only way to bring down food costs, lower energy prices, and build new affordable housing — on both sides of the 49th parallel.
The assemblage at Davos sat in stony silence through Trump’s diatribe. They gave Carney a standing ovation. He had just sketched a new world order built around “economics, security, sovereignty, and values, not as arbitrary actions.”
There are signs that Trump’s support is wearing thin. An astounding 86 percent of Americans oppose annexing Greenland, according to a recent Quinnipiac poll. Why? Families are struggling with the high cost of health care, groceries, housing, and energy, while Trump is focused more on self-serving politics than the needs of people. It’s all about him, all of the time.
He’s planning to stump the country in our mid-term elections. Meanwhile Trump will likely yield a long-overdue comeuppance for the Republican politicians who’ve followed him. It’s long overdue and will be fun to watch and to become involved. We have a country to rescue. Denmark has an unpretentious king, and the U.S. has a ruler of gaudy excess who slaps his name far and wide.
This story also appears in the Cascadia Advocate.
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It’s difficult to add anything more to this excellent assessment of what transpired in Davos. Trump was a complete and total failure, taking more than an hour to show his self concerns. Carney was brilliant, on message, and very successful in his comments, which he wrote himself. And it only took him 17 minutes to show his skills and his morals. What a contrast.
My experience is anecdotal, but I have watched the business consequences of U.S. leadership. I was an enterprise software architect, development manager, and product manager for a large multi-national software company from the 1990s on. Roughly a third of our customers were from EMEA. I frequently negotiated with European and British customers.
In day to day dealing and negotiating with European business people, U.S. military superiority was irrelevant as far as I could see, but the U.S. was respected for its stable currency, ready technical and scientific innovation, and incorruptible rule of law. That respect was the foundation for trust and generated mutually favorable business.
Respect for U.S. leadership has pretty much disappeared this year. The integrity of the Federal Reserve Board is under fire; technical, scientific, and health research funding has been cut; research agendas have been pointlessly sandbagged; the rule of law has been replaced by a weaponized Department of Justice and ICE incarceration and assassination raids.
With its foundation crumbling, U.S. preeminence has been left to rot in a back alley dumpster thanks to a failed deadbeat whose management prowess bankrupted casinos.
As I watched Prime Minister Carney’s speech on CBC, I kept thinking how thoughtful and rational is Canada’s leader, and how unhinged is ours. My Canadian friends are still puzzled about how such a great nation (America) could elect a leader who is a human wrecking ball. And I can’t really explain it to them (or myself). Joel–your article and the comments of Mr. Weller and Mr. Waschke pretty much sum it all up. “Oh Canada!”