US President Donald Trump waves as he strode slowly into the World
Economic Forum (WEF) conference venue in Davos, eastern Switzerland, on
January 25, 2018. PHOTO | AFP
US President Donald Trump swaggered into the lion's den to
confront the world's political and business elite on Thursday, as his
"America First" administration executes an anti-globalist manifesto in
trade, taxes and currency rates.
A year after taking
office, Trump joined the World Economic Forum in Davos with foreign
exchange markets in turmoil and Washington's trading partners in uproar.
Trump
smiled and waved as hundreds of onlookers at the gathering in the Swiss
Alps held up cameraphones as he strode slowly into the conference
venue.
One female admirer grabbed Trump's autograph
while other delegates muttered — out of his earshot — about wanting to
pelt him with fruit.
"It's very exciting to be here,
we're very happy to be here. The United States is doing very well,"
Trump said, before heading into bilateral talks with British Prime
Minister Theresa May.
"This will be a very exciting two
days," he said, after having demonised the globalist Davos crowd on his
unorthodox march to the White House.
'Weaker dollar good'
Other
government leaders and business tycoons in Davos are agog at the
tempestuous course of US policy under Trump. He is due to address the
forum on its closing day Friday at the end of a week that saw his
administration announce a new package of trade tariffs and spark turmoil
on the currency markets.
"I think the most fascinating
thing with President Trump is that he has the capacity to surprise, and
I'm sure we will be surprised tomorrow," Alexander Stubb, former prime
minister of Finland and the new vice president of the European
Investment Bank, told AFP in Davos.
Traders and US
partners already got one surprise in Davos this week when Trump's
treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, appeared to back away from decades
of support by his predecessors for a "strong dollar" policy by declaring
"a weaker dollar is good for us", flouting US commitments in
international fora such as the G20.
International
Monetary Fund chief Christine Lagarde Thursday urged Mnuchin to
"clarify" his stance on the dollar, which slumped on his remarks, and
European Central Bank chief Mario Draghi reminded trading partners to
"refrain" from language that could cause currency volatility.
A weak dollar would potentially boost US exporters but cause headaches for all other trading nations.
"We
are not concerned with where the dollar is in the short term, it is a
very liquid market and we believe in free currencies," the Mnuchin told
reporters Thursday.
His latest comments helped depress
the dollar to a three-year euro low and were taken as reinforcing a
broad offensive in trade built on the "America First" platform, drawing
the ire of French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire.
"We want exchange rates to reflect economic fundamentals... and we shouldn't play with these rates," he said in Davos.
'Race to the bottom'
The
new tariffs imposed this week on solar panels and large washing
machines, which infuriated China and South Korea, combined with big cuts
to the US corporate tax, are accentuating foreign concern that the
United States is abandoning its role as protector of the global trade
order.
Business leaders in Davos have this week given a
broad welcome to Trump's controversial tax reforms, but European
political leaders fear a "race to the bottom" as the United States gains
in appeal to foreign investors.
Aside from his speech
and talks with May, Trump met Thursday with Israeli Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu before another bilateral session on Friday with
Rwandan President Paul Kagame.
With Kagame, who
currently chairs the African Union, Trump will likely try to turn a page
on his reported derogatory comment about "shithole" African countries.
Nice or nasty?
A
year ago, the Davos spotlight was claimed by China's communist leader
Xi Jinping, who took up the torch of global trade to the delight of the
well-heeled audience then anxious about Trump's inauguration.
The
Davos elite are keen now to see which version of Trump will show up —
the business-friendly tycoon or the leader who berated the rest of the
world at the UN General Assembly last September.
"I
think they've already built down their expectations so far that anything
he may say that's conciliatory, they'll be grateful for," Robert
Kaplan, senior fellow at Washington's Center for a New American
Security, told AFP at the forum.
"Yes, people like the
fact that markets are high and America has reformed its taxes, but
people are very nervous about geopolitics around the world and they are
very nervous partially because of Trump," he said.
French
President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel "stole
the show" at Davos already, Kaplan added, after the European leaders
used separate speeches on Wednesday to push back hard against the Trump
manifesto.
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