An Apolitical Post: Trump's 'Carrot or Stick' Speech to the World Economic Forum
Trump's Thursday speech at the World Economic Forum offered some intriguing insights about his economic strategy for the U.S.
By Peter List, Editor | January 24, 2025
Editor’s note: Realizing that our subscribers are a diverse group with varying political views, I am sharing the video below with you to help you navigate the future for your organizations—whether you are an employer or a union—under President Trump.
Yesterday, President Trump spoke remotely to Davos's World Economic Forum (WEF). For those who may not know it, the WEF is “a yearly gathering of global elites famously held in Davos, Switzerland.”
Since you won’t see this in most of the soundbites on TV or in clips on social media, in his speech yesterday, Trump delivered it in a mostly matter-of-fact way and, in essence, gave the ‘global elites’ a different vision than what, perhaps, they wanted to hear.
The full transcript is here.
To sum it up, Trump’s speech could be considered a “carrot or the stick” speech that has profound ramifications here in the U.S. for both employers and unions.
Politics aside, his speech was revealing in ways the press has not seemed to have covered—and has a far deeper meaning than the viral clips circulating online.
It seems that Trump's plan is not to lower taxes for businesses ("domestic producers and manufacturers," as he calls them at 15:14) just for the sake of it, or to enrich billionaires; his goal is to lure businesses around the world to manufacture in the U.S.
"My message to every business in the world is very simple: Come make your product in America, and we will give you among the lowest taxes of any nation on Earth. We’re bringing them down very substantially, even from the original Trump tax cuts. But if you don’t make your product in America, which is your prerogative, then, very simply, you will have to pay a tariff — differing amounts, but a tariff — which will direct hundreds of billions of dollars and even trillions of dollars into our Treasury to strengthen our economy and pay down debt."
In the Q&A portion, Trump also slammed the E.U. and its being "unfair" to American businesses.
“And the other thing, as you know, they took court cases with Apple, and they supposedly won a case that most people didn’t think was much of a case. They won $15 or $16 billion from Apple. They won billions from Google. I think they’re after Facebook for billions and billions.
These are American companies. Whether you like them or not, they’re — they’re American companies, and they shouldn’t be doing that. And that’s — as far as I’m concerned, it’s a form of taxation.”
[This, if you've heard various interviews with Marc Andreessen (here or here) or Mark Zuckerberg, seems to be, in part, why so many tech titans have moved toward Trump—defending American businesses abroad instead of attacking them abroad and at home.]
“From the standpoint of America, the EU treats us very, very unfairly, very badly. They have a large tax that we know about and — a VAT tax — and it’s a very substantial one. They don’t take our far- — essentially, don’t take our farm products and they don’t take our cars. Yet, they send cars to us by the millions.”
Aside from Trump's usual bluster at times (he can't help himself), the entire speech has a lot of interesting insights with longer-term ramifications (or opportunities) that are not being discussed in the media.