Davos: Where the elites and oligarchs try to stop themselves from blowing up the world.
Laughs and gasps as Trump addresses the Davos elites.
Davos, a cathedral of failed globalization
Davos isn’t officially an oligarchs’ summit, but it sure as hell looks and feels like one. The World Economic Forum brands itself as a space where “stakeholders” collaborate on global challenges. Judging from the more than 1,000 private jets that arrived for the WEF, poor and working people, especially from the Global South, aren’t considered stakeholders. No used Renaults in the parking lot. The optics were more coherent than the diplomacy: Matching black parkas and tactical boots created a visual unity that the forum’s politics couldn’t.
In practice, it’s an invitation-only gathering of heads of state, central bankers, billionaires, corporate chiefs, and select intellectuals — a self-selected elite with disproportionate influence over global policy reflecting today’s wider-than-ever wealth gap.
This year, however, Davos could well be the preliminary battlefield between the U.S. and the Europeans over Trump’s bid to annex Greenland and his weaponized use of tariffs.
Trump’s Speech: He forgot which country he wants to buy. Then he folds on Greenland tariffs.
Trump was hours late for his Davos speech because his Air Force One jet had to return to Andrews late Tuesday after experiencing a “minor electrical issue.” DT then had to fly to Davos on a back-up plane, usually used for domestic flights.
What an embarrassment. The Saudi delegation must have been snickering.
You might be wondering why he didn’t just jump on that gold-plated jet that was gifted to him by Qatar in May? It turns out that one has to be retrofitted for later use, not a ready-for-primetime presidential transport. Like every other luxury item Trump’s ever been handed, shiny and expensive, but useless.
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He repeatedly said “Iceland” while clearly referring to Greenland, even attributing yesterday’s U.S. market crash to the wrong country.
“Our stock market took the first dip yesterday because of Iceland,” the president said, referring to market shifts related to his repeated threats to seize Greenland. “So Iceland’s already cost us a lot of money.”
Trump also mistook the two countries a day earlier, while speaking to reporters at the White House. He has threatened hefty tariffs on European countries standing between him and his quest for control of Greenland. “As an example,” he told reporters before traveling to Switzerland, “Iceland, without tariffs, they wouldn’t even be talking to us about it.”
In one overflow room, attendees laughed and gasped throughout his speech. Guffaws when Trump talked about wind farms killing birds. Nervous laughs when he said he was asking for “a piece of ice”, meaning Greenland. Others gasped, “Oh no,” when he said, “Canada lives because of the United States.”
And howls when he again insisted: “All the US is asking for is a place called Greenland.”
“I would say he’s gone from neocon to neo-imperial,” one attendee whispered.
An hour into Trump’s rambling speech, people started to leave the overflow rooms. “He’s a nutcase,” one said on the way out.
After practically being laughed off the stage, Trump announced that he was scrapping his planned tariffs on eight European nations in an effort to force U.S. control over Greenland, pulling a dramatic reversal shortly after insisting he wanted to get the island “including right, title, and ownership.”
Proving once again that if you stand up to a bully, they will fold.
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It would be pretty weird if Hegseth (who hangs on every word from Trump’s mouth as if it were coming straight from Jesus himself) heard the demented one’s speech and began shipping battle-ready Marines to Iceland. Could World War III have just started with an invasion of the wrong country?
Here’s one scenario: Trump, speaking confidently at a global summit, announces decisive action against a nation he believes has wronged the United States. Unfortunately, he means Greenland but repeatedly says Iceland, and the markets react to the wrong island.
NATO convenes an emergency meeting to determine which country is being invaded.
Diplomats scramble to clarify, but the correction email autocorrects “Greenland” to “Greenfield,” and now Indiana is issuing a statement.
What’s striking is how this slip lands in the middle of a much larger geopolitical crisis. His Greenland campaign has already triggered market volatility, tariff threats, and diplomatic backlash, so the Iceland/Greenland mix‑up becomes more than a malaprop. It’s the kind of moment that crystallizes the surreal logic of the whole imperial project.
Lutnick heckled and jeered
“Prior to Donald Trump taking the helm of the United States of America, the world was taking the piss out of us.”
When Treasury Secretary Howard Lutnick used bar-banter grievance language to discuss global economics, it signaled how far the U.S. has fallen on the world stage and how isolated it had become. Lutnick pegged the entire rest of the world as the enemy, with Trump leading a mission of revenge.
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Lutnick was heckled at a dinner hosted by BlackRock’s Larry Fink on Tuesday night, the Financial Times reported on Wednesday, citing sources familiar with the matter.
There was uproar following combative remarks from Lutnick, with widespread jeering, guests exiting, and appeals for calm from Fink, the report added, without going into details on Lutnick’s comments or what the hecklers said.
Canadian P.M. Mark Carney’s speech at Davos
Carney’s Davos speech was remarkable not because it diagnoses the potential collapse of the U.S./European Cold War alliance, but because it comes with an unsolicited confession.
We knew the story of the international rules-based order was partially false, that the strongest would exempt themselves when convenient, that trade rules were enforced asymmetrically, and we knew that international law applied with varied rigor, depending on the identity of the accused or the victim. — Global News
French President Macron’s speech
Macron accused the Trump administration of policies that “openly aim to weaken and subordinate Europe,” framing the tariff fight as an assault on European sovereignty.
He opened with a joke about Trump’s boasts, calling this “a time of peace, stability, and predictability” — a line delivered with deliberate irony. — Mediaite
And followed up with:
A warning about a world drifting away from rules: Macron argued that the international system is shifting “towards a world without rules,” where international law is increasingly ignored and “the law of the strongest” dominates.
A veiled critique of Trump’s Greenland fixation: Macron’s line “we prefer respect to bullies” was widely read as a jab at Trump’s renewed push to assert control over Greenland and his tariff threats. — Economic Times
Trump left Davos having achieved nothing except proving how little power the spectacle now holds. The Greenland/tariffs gambit went nowhere; the Europeans didn’t blink. NATO remained destined for the trash bin of history, and Ukraine stayed trapped in a war the forum couldn’t meaningfully address. In the end, the only thing Davos clarified was the U.S.’s isolation
I am currently working in Norway where the people I talk to alternately take Trump seriously and as a joke. Trump did something here that no Norwegian seemed capable of: he united the left, center, and right, all of whom were indignant about Trump taking Greenland (which by the way used to belong to Norway). Davos is in the news here, but has about as much traction in the minds of people here as in the U.S. I hadn't heard the Iceland confusion, but I love the scenario of Indiana scrambling to defend Greenfield! I found myself repeating--as I had Monday when Indiana outlasted U of Miami for the national college football championship--Go Hoosiers!