DAVOS, Switzerland – In a long, rambling address that was by turns bombastic, aggrieved and self-congratulatory, President Donald Trump pronounced last rites on American leadership of the liberal democratic order forged by the United States and its allies after World War II.
Trump used a keynote speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Wednesday — a pilgrimage site for adherents of globalization — to assert that the United States was done offering its markets and its military protection to European allies he derided as freeloaders. And he vowed to advance his trade war. He characterized tariffs as the price of admission to a land of 300 million consumers.
“The United States is keeping the whole world afloat,” Trump said. “Everybody took advantage of the United States.”
By evening, Trump had flip-flopped on Greenland. He said in a social media post that he would no longer use tariffs to try to wrest control of the Danish territory, at least while discussions between his top aides and Europeans carried forth. The announcement spared the sovereignty of the island, but there was no taking back the significance of Trump’s attack on the global economic order just hours earlier.
The American president appeared in the same auditorium where, nine years earlier, the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, gave a speech claiming credentials as a champion of international cooperation. Xi captivated the village of Davos with his endorsement of what he described as “economic globalization.” His 2017 address, delivered days before Trump was inaugurated for his first term, resonated as a clear yet futile effort to stave off the trade war that soon unfolded.
“Pursuing protectionism is just like locking oneself in a dark room,” Xi said that day. “While wind and rain may be kept outside, that dark room will also block light and air. No one will emerge as a winner in a trade war.”
Then as now, deep skepticism greeted China’s bid for recognition as a responsible superpower in contrast to Trump’s vision of “America First.” China’s government has long subsidized the making of factory goods that have threatened jobs from Indiana to Indonesia. China’s surveillance state has jailed dissidents, labor organizers and journalists. Its military has menaced the self-governing island of Taiwan and neighbors in Southeast Asia. Not even its greatest allies would describe China as a paragon of fair dealing.
Yet in the near decade since, the sense has only been enhanced that China is — at least rhetorically — invested in economic values that Trump has renounced: engagement in multilateral institutions to advance its causes, faith in the wealth-enhancing powers of global trade and recognition that no country is large enough or powerful enough to go it alone.