It’s a river in flood, Donald Trump. A few hours before Inauguration Day, the new American president connects with the Davos Forum and hurls broadsides to the right and left, especially against Europe still fixated on the Green Deal which he dubs “green bluff”.
To reverse the trend, the tycoon’s plan is clear. First: Make the United States “the Capital of Artificial Intelligence and Cryptocurrency”. Second: Trump means it cut the taxes and will ask central banks to lower interest rates. Third: he wants to attract investments, ensuring that “America becomes a country based on merit” and not on inclusive nonsense. And fourth: He will ask global companies to produce their goods directly in America. Whoever decides to open production plants in the USA could obtain a 15% corporate tax; those who do not do so will have to face duties. “We will make the largest tax cut in the history of the United States. My message to every business in the world is clear: come here to produce, and we will give you among the lowest taxes in the world – he explained – But if you don’t come to produce in America, which is your right, then, quite simply , you will have to pay customs duties which will carry hundreds of billions of dollars into our coffers, strengthening our economy. Under my administration, there will be no better place on earth to create jobs and build factories than here in the good old USA.” And this is where the EU turns its mouth: in fact, the risk is that European companies will lose out. “Europe has treated us very badly – Trump reiterated – I will do something about our trade deficit with the EU. We have some big complaints with Brussels.” The same goes for China: “the trade relationship” with Beijing “is unbalanced and needs to be corrected” given that the USA has “a huge deficit”.
Trump dedicated a large passage of his speech to the Old Continent. He criticized the EU for excessive bureaucracy (“When I had my private career I was doing a real estate project in Ireland and Ireland gave me approval in a week. Then I needed the agreement of the EU and I said it would take five or six years”). And he accused Brussels of treat America “unfairly.” “with large taxes, very substantial: Europeans don’t take our cars. They put tariffs on things we want to do: non-monetary tariffs, but then they expect to sell their goods in our country and they have a trade surplus with us of hundreds of billions of dollars.”
Then there is the issue of energy. During the speech atInauguration Day the president was clear: the USA will say goodbye to the green rush, will return to drilling in search of oil and gas and will stop focusing only on electric cars. “The green industry is a cheating – he repeats in Davos – We will let people buy the cars they want”. And energy? The US will drill, search for gas and oil and export LNG to Europe. “We will build plants thanks to the Declaration of Emergency that I can proclaim myself – said Trump – We will double energy production. Therefore I say: start building immediately. Stop with the green, because that’s the past. We will allow electricity generation factories to be built. And when there are problems or emergencies, we will resort to coal. Nobody can destroy coal, and it is an excellent back up and we have more coal than everyone else and also more oil and gas than everyone else.”
Trump is convinced that if black gold “cost less, the war in Ukraine it would end immediately.” For this reason it will ask OPEC and Riyadh to lower the price. After yesterday’s “threats” to impose new sanctions on Russia, meanwhile, Trump today reiterated that he “would like to meet Putin soon”. “Ukraine is ready for an agreement to end the war – he explained – The war should not have started. Many more people have died than is reported.” The president hopes to find a side with Xi Jinping who “I like very much” and with whom “we have an excellent relationship: “I hope China helps us stop the war between Russia and Ukraine, since they have a lot of power on that scenario. I talked about it with Xi during our phone conversation, and we hope we can work together to stop it.”