‘Europe headed in wrong direction’: Trump tells WEF

Trump criticises Europe: not going in the right direction Keystone-SDA

United States President Donald Trump lashed out at Europe and confirmed his Greenland ambitions during an address to the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Switzerland.

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To protect the world, Greenland must be taken over by the US, Trump insisted. However, he would not use force to achieve this, he added.

Instead, he called for “immediate negotiations”, without saying with whom. Denmark, to which Greenland belongs, and other European states such as Germany had always insisted that the island was not for sale.

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Only the US could defend “this huge piece of land”, said Trump. “We need it for strategic national security and international security.”

The US president criticised European countries at several points in his long speech. Europe was not developing “in the right direction”, he said. Certain countries were “very negatively” unrecognisable, said Trump, who did, however, praise German Chancellor Friedrich Merz.

Germany is currently generating a good fifth less electricity than in 2017, Trump said, but this is not the fault of Merz. “He is solving the problem. He will do a great job,” said Trump. By contrast, Trump criticised French President Emmanuel Macron. He mockingly mentioned the fact that Macron had spoken on the Davos podium the day before wearing sunglasses.

“Hippest” country

Trump began his speech with a lot of praise for himself in his first year in office. The US is the “hippest” country in the world, said Trump, who greeted “many friends” and “some enemies”.

“When America booms, the whole world booms. That’s always been the case. When it’s bad, it’s bad for everybody,” he said.

Trump particularly emphasised his own economic and customs policy, which is highly controversial in Europe. “Instead of raising taxes or subsidising domestic producers, we lower them and raise tariffs for foreign nations to pay for the damage they cause,” he said.

Trump also mentioned his controversial budget policy. “We have cut federal spending by $100 billion and reduced the federal budget deficit by 27% in a single year. It will go down much further, bringing inflation down significantly from the record highs of the Biden administration.”

Trump sharply criticised clean energy efforts in other countries. He spoke of a “green scam”, “perhaps the biggest scam in history”. He said that Europe was spoiling the landscape with wind turbines and that energy production was far too expensive.

In addition to oil and gas, the US also relied heavily on nuclear energy. “I have signed an executive order that provides for the construction and authorisation of many new nuclear reactors,” he said.

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Delayed landing

The US president began his speech punctually despite a significantly delayed journey. Due to technical problems, the government aircraft Air Force One turned around on the way to Switzerland. The US delegation boarded a replacement aircraft and finally landed in Zurich on Wednesday lunchtime.

On Thursday evening, following the forum, EU heads of state and government plan to discuss how best to respond to Trump’s tariff threats at a crisis meeting in Brussels.

Translated from German by AI/mga

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