Trump made the trip to Davos and spoke for nearly and hour-and-a-half and it was the usual song and dance. It was more of a campaign speech for a domestic audience than focused on the global order. It was all comments you’ve heard before with the usual “the likes of which you’ve never seen.” He also made some ridiculous claims like that the US will double steel production in the next four months, which is absurd.
But there were two comments worth noting and they’re why the stock market is rebounding from yesterday’s rout, which was the worst since Oct 10.
1) He said the US won’t use force in Greenland
He didn’t outline any kind of coherent reason for taking Greenland. He talked about missile defense but but that’s something the US can already do in Greenland. He continued to insist on the US taking it over and warned that if Greenland refuses (or Europe does), then “we will remember.” That’s somewhat ominous and tariffs are obviously on the table but at least his ‘no force’ pledge reduces some of the tail risks that would truly cause Europe to have to look in the mirror and break from the US. There will surely be more developments on this file while Trump is in Davos.
2) He talked about the stock market doubling
Trump spoke about new highs in the stock market, the same as he did yesterday. However he also said that the stock market will double. It’s a reminder that stocks are Trump’s north star at the end of the day. He highlighted the weak day yesterday, which is a reminder that he looks at it daily and could never take the pain of a market-negative policy for long.
On the downside, he once again talked about capping credit card interest rates and blocking institutional ownership of single-family homes but the market has already concluded that neither of those things will actually happen.
