Trump at Davos

Thursday 22 January 2026

The annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos has long served as a ritualised encounter between power and persuasion, in which leaders perform reassurance to markets and allies even when substance is thin. The speech delivered there yesterday by Donald Trump departed from that convention. Its register, tone and implied hierarchy of peoples carried xenophobic, and at moments racially inflected, undertones that jar not merely with European sensibilities but with the assumptions that have governed transatlantic relations since 1945.

The speech’s framing of migration, trade and national identity rested on a conception of the United States as an embattled fortress whose prosperity is siphoned away by foreigners, and whose culture is diluted by the presence of the wrong kinds of people. This rhetoric is familiar in American domestic politics. What was striking in Davos was its projection outward, offered to a European audience whose post-war settlement rests upon the repudiation of ethnic nationalism and the moral lessons drawn from its catastrophic consequences. The implication that prosperity is zero-sum between nations, and that cultural homogeneity is a prerequisite for political stability, is not merely at odds with European political theory. It is an implicit rebuke to the very values the forum exists to promote.

European leaders have historically distinguished between American administrations and the deeper continuity of American institutions. That distinction is now under strain. The xenophobic undertones of the Davos speech were not an accidental flourish but a reiteration of a governing worldview. When articulated by the chief executive of the United States on a global stage, such views pose a practical question for Europe’s governments: can they continue to engage in good faith with an administration whose head appears openly hostile to the pluralism, internationalism and legal universalism that underpin Europe’s political order?

One answer is pragmatic endurance. Europe has, after all, worked with American presidents whose values diverged sharply from its own, including during the Cold War, when strategic necessity trumped ideological discomfort. Yet there is a qualitative difference between policy divergence and rhetorical delegitimation. To suggest, as the Davos speech implicitly did, that European openness is weakness and that multicultural societies are inherently unstable is to question the legitimacy of Europe’s political choices themselves. Engagement under such conditions risks normalising contempt.

This dilemma has revived interest in an older, quieter channel of transatlantic diplomacy: the legislative branch. The United States is not governed by her president alone. The United States Congress retains substantial authority over trade, sanctions, defence appropriations and treaty ratification. Historically, Europe has cultivated congressional relationships to stabilise policy through periods of executive volatility. That strategy now appears less a supplement than a necessity.

There are limits to what legislative outreach can achieve. Congress is itself polarised, and xenophobic rhetoric has seeped into parts of the American political mainstream. Nevertheless many legislators, including within the president’s own party, remain committed to alliances, to the rule-based international order and to Europe as a strategic and cultural partner. Targeted engagement with committees, caucuses and state-level constituencies can preserve cooperation even when executive diplomacy is corrosive. It is a slower, more granular form of statecraft, but one that aligns with Europe’s own preference for institutional resilience over personal rapport.

The implications extend beyond diplomacy to security. NATO, although not mentioned explicitly, rests on political trust as much as on military capability. When the American president frames allies as exploiters and cultural antagonists, deterrence credibility erodes. European states may respond by accelerating strategic autonomy, not as an act of defiance but as insurance against rhetorical unpredictability translating into policy abandonment.

There is also a moral dimension that Europe cannot evade. To continue business as usual in the face of xenophobic language from the White House risks complicity through silence. European leaders are constrained by diplomatic protocol, but civil society, parliaments and the press are not. Drawing clear lines between cooperation on shared interests and rejection of values-based hostility is essential if Europe is to retain coherence at home while navigating turbulence abroad.

The Davos speech thus crystallised a choice rather than creating it. Europe can neither disengage from the United States nor pretend that words spoken by her president on a global stage are inconsequential. The path forward is likely to be bifurcated: cautious, interest-driven engagement with the executive where unavoidable, combined with intensified partnership with Congress and with American society beyond the presidency. This is not an abandonment of the transatlantic relationship. It is an adaptation to an uncomfortable reality, in which Europe must work with the United States while declining to mirror the values her current leader proclaims.

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The author is a member of the World Economic Forum.