It’s Trump Day at Davos! The President of the United States is once again en route to the World Economic Forum after his plane was ordered home due to a “minor electrical issue”, according to the White House.
By switching aircraft, Trump managed, albeit unintentionally, to further heighten the tension in the Swiss mountain resort, where participants were eagerly awaiting the speech of the week, now scheduled for Wednesday afternoon.
What used to be a meeting for the big movers and shakers of the world has this year become the Trump show, with a global audience holding its breath.
The reason is obvious: transatlantic relations are a breaking point.
Trump’s renewed push to bring Greenland under US control and his threat to impose punitive tariffs on European allies opposing his effort have left decision-makers on both sides of the Atlantic shaken to the core.
What initially began as a strategic debate over Arctic security has rapidly escalated into an open confrontation over sovereignty, economic coercion, and the future of a historic partnership between the US and Europe.
And not a day goes by without Trump ramping up his rhetoric on Greenland, trying to make the world believe that he is uncompromisingly serious about annexing a territory of a friendly treaty ally.
‘A Spirit of Dialogue’
The all-important question in Davos, which this year has the motto “A Spirit of Dialogue,” is this: how will world leaders handle Trump’s Greenland ambitions, which many still consider a bad joke?
“Most people still doubt that Trump is serious about it and that he would blow up NATO and start a war with Europe,” Harold Honju Koh, a professor of International Law at Yale University and a former legal adviser to the US State Department, told Euronews.
And while European leaders at the World Economic Forum are inclined to take Trump seriously, they are still scrambling to find the right response.
“Plunging us into a dangerous downward spiral would only aid the very adversaries we are both so committed to keeping out of our strategic landscape. So our response will be unflinching, united and proportional,” EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said on the forum’s main stage on Tuesday.
“We consider the people of the United States not just our allies, but our friends,” von der Leyen insisted.
Yet, Trump is not simply attending Davos, he is making an entrance: with five cabinet secretaries and other senior officials, he is leading the largest US delegation ever to the World Economic Forum.
Compare that to Denmark’s decision not to send any participants at all, a move widely regarded as a snub to the US president.
The American delegation includes Secretary of State Marco Rubio, special envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, setting the stage for high-profile discussions not only on Greenland, but also on Ukraine, Venezuela, Gaza and Iran.
Trump’s new threats against Iran
Prior to his departure, the latter was the subject of escalating rhetoric of Trump in response to tense warnings from Iran’s leadership.
“I’ve left notification that anything ever happens, we’re going to blow them up. The whole country is going to be blown up,” Trump told the US TV network NewsNation.
“I would absolutely hit them so hard, but I have very firm instructions – anything happen, they’re going to wipe them off the face of the earth,” he added.
Those words have not reassured the Danish government. Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen and her Greenlandic counterpart Jens-Frederik Nielsen said on Tuesday that they “cannot rule out” a US military intervention against the arctic territory.
Yet, directly addressing what he called “bitterness”, US Treasury Scott Bessent, who arrived in Davos ahead of Trump, urged European countries on Tuesday to “sit down and wait” for Trump to arrive.
“Take a deep breath, do not have this reflexive anger that we’ve seen”, Bessent told reporters on Wednesday.
“Why don’t they sit down, wait for President Trump to get here and listen to his argument? Because I think they’re going to be persuaded.”