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Opinion | How ‘America first’, in many respects, puts America behind
Amid the precarity of Trump’s limited economic success at home, trade wars abroad have only sped up the transition to a multipolar world
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Why you can trust SCMP
US President Donald Trump’s trip to Europe to speak at the World Economic Forum in the Swiss alpine town of Davos was possibly one he wished he had never made; such was its failure to impress.
First, his plane had to turn back due to a technical problem.
Second, he gave a typically hostile speech, but then he lived up to his nickname “Taco” (Trump always chickens out) over threats to invade Greenland that would have imperilled about a third of global trade.
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Third, he said disingenuously that if it hadn’t been for the US, “you’d all be speaking German”. Davos is German-speaking.
Fourth, he didn’t need to travel to Europe to give a political speech with a clear domestic agenda full of factual inaccuracies and empty boasts – except that it did contain some surprising truths. The US economy is doing relatively well despite economists’ hand-wringing over the uncertainty brought by Trump and his frequent rants on Truth Social.
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The damage wrought by the flip-flop imposition of tariffs; starting and self-declaring the end of wars; shake-downs of his actual, potential or perceived political opponents; getting involved in the minutiae of the private economy; attacking the independence of the US Federal Reserve and his One Big Beautiful Bill to cut taxes without increasing public revenue all contribute to stalled business decision-making.
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