DAVOS, Switzerland \u2013 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.<\/p>\n
Trump used a keynote speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Wednesday \u2014 a pilgrimage site for adherents of globalization \u2014 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.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe United States is keeping the whole world afloat,\u201d Trump said. \u201cEverybody took advantage of the United States.\u201d<\/p>\n
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\u2019s attack on the global economic order just hours earlier.<\/p>\n
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 \u201ceconomic globalization.\u201d 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.<\/p>\n
\u201cPursuing protectionism is just like locking oneself in a dark room,\u201d Xi said that day. \u201cWhile 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
Then as now, deep skepticism greeted China\u2019s bid for recognition as a responsible superpower in contrast to Trump\u2019s vision of \u201cAmerica First.\u201d China\u2019s government has long subsidized the making of factory goods that have threatened jobs from Indiana to Indonesia. China\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
Yet in the near decade since, the sense has only been enhanced that China is \u2014 at least rhetorically \u2014 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"DAVOS, Switzerland \u2013 In a long, rambling address that was by turns bombastic, aggrieved and self-congratulatory, President Donald…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":41395,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[174],"tags":[12,3128,360,13,191,189,1958,1106,188,190,1474,29967,636,2895,2749,1714,84,3282,17578,2537],"class_list":["post-41394","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-china","tag-davos","tag-defense","tag-donald-trump","tag-economy","tag-economy-of-japan","tag-eu","tag-global-economy","tag-japans-economy","tag-japanese-economy","tag-nato","tag-republicans","tag-russia","tag-russia-ukraine-war","tag-tariffs","tag-trade","tag-u-s","tag-ukraine","tag-vladimir-putin","tag-xi-jinping"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41394","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41394"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41394\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41395"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41394"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41394"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41394"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}