World leaders take turns trashing Trump before he lands in Davos

World leaders take turns trashing Trump before he lands in Davos
Thu Jan 25, 2018 11:09:10

On Thursday morning, Donald Trump is expected to make his debut at the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland.

(VanityFair) -- Ahead of Trump’s arrival, world leaders have essentially used their speeches to take turns shading the 45th president’s “America First” approach.

On Wednesday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said that, as a country that wants to help “solve the problems of the world,” Germany doesn’t think “shutting ourselves off and isolating ourselves will . . . lead [to] a good future.”

In order to solve current and future problems, she said, multilateral solutions should take precedent over “unilateral, protectionist course[s]” of action. Merkel, who was last seen attempting to explain to Trump how trade agreements work—a tutorial that, despite her reported patience, failed miserably—noted that it was a “multilateral response” that helped to curtail the global financial crisis.

Earlier in the week, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi kicked things off by calling protectionist trade policies “worrisome,” telling a crowd of government and business leaders that “isolationism” is not the answer. (Hours later, the Trump administration announced that it would slap solar energy cells and panels with 30-percent tariffs.)

Elsewhere in you-know-exactly-who-we’re-talking-about remarks, Brazilian President Michel Temer told an audience, “When we are closed within ourselves, we are closed to new technologies, we are closed to new ideas, to new possibilities, and we therefore remain closed to actual effective solutions to our shared problems.”

Even French President Emmanuel Macron, who was said to play a key role in convincing Trump to attend the globalist orgy, and who recently scored an invite for a state visit, told a group of leaders that in order to “rein in the excesses of global capitalism,” world leaders must create a new framework “based on cooperation and multilateralism.”

Team Trump appears blissfully unaware that the world in general, and Davos participants in particular, think its policies suck. On Tuesday, in response to the news that 11 nations, including Canada, had reached an agreement on the Trans-Pacific Partnership sans the U.S., Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin told reporters that the administration is a fan of “bilateral trading agreements” and that “anyone who wants to do trade on a reciprocal basis [with the U.S.] is free to do it.” Thus far, no one has taken the administration up on this generous offer.

(Photos: Getty/AFP)

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