Lutnick’s Davos Speech Was ‘Just Too Much,’ Lagarde Tells WSJ

(Bloomberg) — European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde said she walked out of a speech by US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick at the World Economic Forum because she found his anti-European rhetoric inappropriate given the setting.

“To have as a last speaker, without any rebuttal of any arguments, someone who just bashed Europe, right, left, and center. I thought it was just too much and just unnecessarily offensive,” Lagarde said in an interview with the Wall Street Journal.

The incident at last month’s gathering in Davos drew attention for highlighting transatlantic divisions. Lutnick belittled European economies and their lack of competitiveness in his remarks, making several Europeans in the room uncomfortable, people familiar with the matter said at the time.

The setting was an invitation-only sit-down dinner that, according to Lagarde, was also attended by prime ministers, presidents of European countries, the King and Queen of Belgium and the president of Switzerland. The fact that it was due to finish with Lutnick’s comments, “I don’t think it was either polite nor appropriate,” she said.

Lagarde defended Europe in the interview, saying there are lots of “wonderful” things about the continent that go unnoticed — in areas such as life expectancy, infant mortality and poverty. At the same time, she acknowledged that the bloc had to “improve its game” on other fronts.

“We have a monetary union but we don’t have enough by way of economic union,” she said. “Because we have these barriers to the single market, because we still have processes that are overly complicated, duplicated in many ways.”

Her reaction to Lutnick’s speech was also noteworthy because she’s considering taking over the leadership of the WEF. “It’s one of the many options” for her time after the ECB, Lagarde told the newspaper.

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