Trump heads to Davos amid deep worries about the U.S.-European alliance.

 

Jan. 21, 2026, 12:00 a.m. ET4 hours ago

Zolan Kanno-YoungsZolan Kanno-Youngs is in Switzerland covering President Trump’s trip to the World Economic Forum.

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2026/01/21/us/trump-davos-greenland-news#section-332871333

 

Trump heads to Davos amid deep worries about the U.S.-European alliance.

 

President Trump is known for disrupting global summits, lashing out at allies and hanging the possibility of tariffs over trading partners.

 

So far, America’s international alliances have largely weathered his threats.

 

But when Mr. Trump descends on a gathering of the world’s wealthiest and most powerful leaders in the Swiss Alps on Wednesday, he will encounter a group of longtime diplomatic partners now reassessing their relationships with the United States.

 

Mr. Trump’s pugilistic demands to acquire Greenland have bewildered many of the European leaders attending the World Economic Forum in Davos, raising questions about the strength of the trans-Atlantic alliance and turning the elitist gathering into an all-hands effort to de-escalate tensions with an emboldened American president.

 

Asked Tuesday how far he was willing to go to acquire Greenland, Mr. Trump told reporters at the White House, “You’ll find out.”

 

His vague threats of territorial expansion, as well as warnings of new tariffs against European leaders who do not heed his demands, have brought Mr. Trump’s relationship with his counterparts there to a new low.

 

On Tuesday before his trip to Davos, Mr. Trump mocked European leaders on social media and shared private missives from leaders including President Emmanuel Macron of France, who wrote, “I do not understand what you are doing on Greenland.”

 

The fraught dynamics reflect the latest twist in the Trump administration’s bumpy relationship with Europe. Mark Rutte, NATO’s secretary general, has sought to build a rapport with Mr. Trump. But the administration’s national security strategy released last month warned that Europe faces “civilizational erasure” and said the United States should help Europe “correct its current trajectory.”

 

“It’s fair to say that Davos, like so many other international institutions or forums, is another piece of the system that Trump is going to fundamentally transform,” said Michael Froman, a Davos attendee and the president of the Council on Foreign Relations, a U.S. think tank. He said all topics at the annual World Economic Forum had effectively taken a back seat “to discuss whether this is the beginning of the end of the Western alliance.”

 

Some leaders acknowledged a new reality in which they could not rely on the United States. Mr. Macron warned that “imperial ambitions are resurfacing” and that the U.S. had openly aimed to “weaken and subordinate Europe.”

 

Mr. Macron said he would respond by pushing for “more sovereignty and more autonomy for the Europeans.”

 

And Prime Minister Mark Carney of Canada described the current moment as a “breaking of the world order, the end of a pleasant fiction and the beginning of a brutal reality where the geopolitics of the great powers is not subject to any constraint.”

 

Some leaders at the summit were contemplating retaliatory tariffs against the United States. But Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who arrived at Davos before Mr. Trump, warned such a move would be “unwise.”

 

Much of the summit’s attention will be focused on Mr. Trump’s planned delivery Wednesday of a speech the White House has described as a “special address” to the forum, though a delay in his departure because of an electrical problem on Air Force One threatened to push back the timing.

 

Mr. Trump, who is leading the largest ever U.S. delegation to Davos, with multiple cabinet secretaries, was also expected to hold meetings with foreign leaders and attend a reception with chief executives in finance and cryptocurrency on Wednesday evening.

 

On Thursday, Mr. Trump is scheduled to make an announcement on his “board of peace,” a group he has said will help rebuild Gaza. Mr. Trump has invited President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, whom European leaders have sought to isolate over his invasion of Ukraine, to join the board.

 

It is unclear which other leaders will attend that announcement. Mr. Macron, who was invited, does not plan to join the board. Asked on Monday about the refusal, Mr. Trump threatened to impose a 200 percent tariff on French wine, one of the country’s best-known exports.

 

Other global dynamics are expected to play out at the forum. The administration’s criminal investigation of Jerome H. Powell, the Federal Reserve chair, has rattled many of the banking chiefs flocking to Davos. And his standoff with European leaders over Greenland led to a drop in the value of U.S. stocks, the dollar and government bonds on Tuesday.

 

While international issues will most likely dominate Mr. Trump’s time in Davos, his aides have said he will use the summit to address concerns about affordability in the United States.

 

Mr. Trump is planning to dedicate at least some of his remarks on Wednesday to detailing how his administration will make housing more affordable.

 

Even some of Mr. Trump’s advisers have privately worried about the optics of attending a summit for wealthy bankers and chief executives when some critics in his base have accused him of focusing too much on foreign policy and not on the economy.

 

At the White House on Tuesday, Mr. Trump promoted his economic policies, dismissing polling showing many Americans are frustrated over his handling of the economy. Mr. Trump blamed his advisers, suggesting they were not doing enough to promote his administration’s successes.

 

“Maybe I have bad public relations people,” Mr. Trump said. “But we’re not getting it across.”