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The rich and powerful were pushing and shoving each other to get in to see Donald Trump speak at the Congress Centre in Davos. Perhaps it was fear of missing out; perhaps it was a desire to see history in the making.
But midway through the US president’s rambling, hour-plus discourse, many of his audience were checking their phones — or wandering off to other appointments.
There was no history made in Trump’s Davos speech. But there was the beginnings of a climbdown on Greenland. In one of the few relatively coherent passages, Trump explicitly ruled out the use of American force to seize the island from Denmark.
Interestingly, the US president also did not reiterate his threat to impose tariffs on European countries on February 1, if they do not yield over Greenland. That particular threat was not taken off the table. But the fact that it was not repeated was perhaps significant.
And so it proved later on Wednesday when Trump announced, after discussions with Nato secretary-general Mark Rutte, that he will not impose tariffs on US trading partners on February 1.
If Trump is indeed going to climb down on Greenland, it will be because he finally faced some opposition — from the Europeans, from within his own Republican Party and from the markets. While boasting about new stock market highs during his presidency, Trump also noted that the markets had fallen sharply yesterday.
It was market reaction that persuaded Trump to moderate his tariff policies after his so-called “liberation day” on April 2. The same thing may be happening over Greenland.
The US president is demanding “immediate negotiations”. The Europeans would be wise to slow walk the process — remembering that Trump has a habit of making grandiose threats that are then forgotten. Less than two weeks ago, he was promising the people of Iran that “help is on its way”. They’re still waiting.
Of course, it is too soon to relax over Greenland. A substantial proportion of Trump’s speech was devoted to the subject — and he continued to state his largely bogus strategic case for US ownership of the island.
Trump repeatedly attempted to tie European compliance on Greenland to the future of Nato — complaining that Europeans are ungrateful for American protection and claiming falsely that the US paid virtually 100 per cent of the costs of the alliance. He also said that the US has no real need of the Nato alliance because it is protected by a “big, beautiful ocean”. And he reminded his audience that Rutte had once called him “daddy” — a dreadful mistake that Rutte will never fully live down.
But the US president preferred to rely on vaguely menacing language, rather than explicit, tangible threats. He was clearly riled by yesterday’s speech by Mark Carney, the Canadian prime minister, which was a stirring call for middle powers to resist coercion by great powers.
In his own speech, Trump stressed Canada’s dependence on the US and told Carney — “Remember that, Mark, next time you make your statements.” As for America’s European allies, Trump told them that on Greenland — “You could say no and we will remember.”
But memory cuts both ways. There is a strong chance that — within a month — Trump will have moved on from Greenland and will be indulging another obsession or looking for another victim to pick off.
But Europeans, Canadians and other American allies will not forget the Greenland episode. It has crystallised many of their fears and resentments about the US.
The reason that Carney’s speech resonated so widely was that it was an explicit acknowledgment that the old order, based on a benign US, has gone. And it was also a call to action that many in Davos found inspiring.
When Carney finished speaking yesterday, he was greeted with a standing ovation. Trump, by contrast, got a tepid round of applause. That contrast spoke volumes.
gideon.rachman@ft.com
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