“But if anything it has been good, and we should say thank you to the bashers, because I think it has given us a complete realization of the fact that we have to be more focused,” she added, especially on “innovation” and “productivity.”
In the last few days at the Davos summit, Trump said Europe was not heading in “the right direction, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent called Denmark “irrelevant,” and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick berated Europe during a VIP dinner with European officials and business leaders — reportedly prompting Lagarde, who was in attendance, to walk out of the event in protest.
But Lagarde also struck an optimistic note Friday, detailing her “very, very strong belief” that Europeans and Americans share similar values and ultimately need to come together.
“I personally — and this might be my emotional side, sorry about that, we women tend to be emotional — I think we have to think of the people,” she said. “And I have huge trust and affection for the American people, and I know that at the end of the day, the deeply rooted values will prevail.”
European leaders scrambled this week to figure out how to respond to an increasingly hostile U.S. administration. That entailed holding a summit Thursday evening in which they discussed countermeasures if Trump — who dropped his threat to impose punishing tariffs on European countries that opposed his bid to annex Greenland — actually pulls the trigger in the future.