00:00Hélène Landemore, a professor of political science at Yale University and Chad Thomas-Bloomberg's executive editor for Europe.
00:06He's also been in charge of our Davos coverage.
00:08So thank you both for joining us, Chad.
00:10It's been quite a week and actually a lot of people, you know, say, what's the main key takeaway?
00:14So, and there are different lenses.
00:15It could be, it's Mark Carney asking for, if not a new world order, like people to support, you know, Canada,
00:22maybe sign alliances as a counterbalance to the U.S.
00:26Well, I think one of the main takeaways is that a deal with Donald Trump is never really a deal.
00:32That if you think you've signed something and it's over, if there's something that he wants from you again, that whole deal is reopened.
00:40We saw that with Europe this week with the threat of new tariffs because he was upset that they were pushing back on Greenland.
00:47I think that the other takeaway is that Europeans finally this week pushed back on their side as well.
00:53And that got him to back down.
00:54There was also some opposition at home, even from Republicans, over the Greenland threats.
01:00So that played into it as well.
01:02But to me, the key takeaway is that a deal is never a deal.
01:05And you heard a lot of Europeans saying that Ursula von der Leyen, the commission president, said,
01:11look, we signed an agreement with you and now you have to stick to it.
01:15But if he wants something, the tariff threat is always on the table.
01:18Yeah.
01:18So this is really weaponizing, you know, tariffs, Professor.
01:22It is.
01:22I would say for me the main takeaway is indeed that we buried the post-World War II international order with, you know, Europe scrambling to reinvent itself painfully.
01:32I think I agree that Trump is coming off as a mafia boss that you cannot really trust.
01:39Although if you stand up to him, actually, it works.
01:42The other takeaway for me is that we barely talked about Iran and I'm heartbroken over what's going on over there.
01:48And I am grateful to Zelensky for actually making a point about that, about how people looked away and we shouldn't.
01:54So, Professor, I mean, is there a danger, which we felt actually here, is that, you know,
01:58the president focuses on something and all of the attention of everyone, leaders, media, everything is on that issue.
02:04And so everything else is forgotten.
02:05Exactly.
02:06Yeah.
02:06No, I well, I came here to try to, you know, change the focus from elected leaders to civil society,
02:14the shy, the people who are not present in this room.
02:17I hope we can do more with that and kind of try to bring the voices of people who are not heard,
02:24including people in Iran, but not only so that this conversation are just not focused on what elites care about.
02:30I think that's part of why we heard such a fiery speech yesterday from the Ukrainian president Zelensky.
02:36Ukraine was not the main topic in their first days of Davos.
02:40Everyone was talking about Greenland.
02:42And in the meantime, he's sitting in Kyiv where there are power blackouts because of the Russian attacks on the country.
02:49And he really was basically shouting at European leaders, please do something.
02:55My country needs your help.
02:56Yeah.
02:57Chad, I mean, how do you view?
02:58I mean, there's there's of course the reaction of the European leaders was mixed.
03:02Right.
03:02So France wanted to be much more aggressive in terms of negotiating tactic with Donald Trump.
03:08But Germany was like a little bit shyer.
03:10I mean, a lot of it is psychology.
03:12This is not like, you know, it's not negotiation.
03:15It's like, how do you take the president so that you kind of get what you want from him without antagonizing him too much?
03:21So I don't know that this was intentional.
03:24In other words, that they had put together a plan.
03:25But there seemed to be a bit of a good cop, bad cop going on.
03:28You had Macron here and really laying into the president and the U.S. for its tactics.
03:34He departed Davos, though, before the president ever arrived.
03:39The people that were then here on the ground talking to him, it was Mark Rutte, who has really aligned into him and has really worked to build that relationship.
03:48It was Alexander Stubb, the Finnish president, who also has good relationships with the president.
03:52And those were the people who were really trying to talk to him about Greenland and to try to come up with a deal there.
03:59But essentially also with Germany, of course, they're just so dependent on the U.S. economically that it's hard for them to come out and really hit hard.
04:10That said, they also were privately saying that if they have to take some of these tougher measures, they're ready to do that.
04:19You had the German vice chancellor saying that Greenland for Germany was also a red line.
04:24Professor, what did you make of President Trump's speech?
04:27Again, a lot of people said, oh, he backed down because he said he wouldn't use military force against Greenland.
04:33Like, is our radar a little bit off?
04:36I know I heard people say that.
04:37My interpretation was kind of the opposite.
04:39I'm probably wrong because I'm in the minority.
04:41But I heard a mafia boss say, look, you're either going to give it to me or look at all these planes and all these, you know, weapons I have.
04:51I just felt that like very much threatening, actually.
04:54But again, I am probably not savvy enough in all these diplomatic undercurrents.
05:00I think it's a disgrace that this is the tone of the leader of the free world.
05:04A disgrace.
05:04He also followed up the I'm not going to take Greenland militarily with we will remember those who don't give us what we want.
05:13Yeah.
05:13And that's definitely like a huge threat.
05:15What do you think will happen in Iran?
05:17I don't know.
05:18I actually I'm usually not for interventions.
05:21But in this particular case, I do think that they made an implicit promise.
05:24I mean, Trump tweeted help is on the way that led directly to people being massacred by this lunatic.
05:32So I think I think at that point, we have a moral duty to do something.
05:36And I don't know.
05:37I don't know what it is, but something needs to be done.
05:40What kind of negotiations do we know?
05:41I mean, it's true.
05:42Iran was hardly mentioned, actually.
05:44It was just in the Q&A at the end.
05:46Like, is this because the focus is elsewhere or we talked a little bit more about Venezuela, for example?
05:52Well, I think from the perspective of European leaders, they're focused on what's happening closest to them.
05:59Greenland is, for them, part of Europe.
06:03And it's part of the Kingdom of Denmark.
06:06Denmark being an EU member.
06:07And NATO.
06:08And NATO.
06:09And so this was part of their focus.
06:11Then from Greenland, they go to Ukraine.
06:14Ukraine also being part of Europe.
06:15And these other things then get pushed to the sidelines, at least from the perspective of what the Europeans are focusing on.
06:22Could you see that as this, you know, the start of the end of NATO?
06:27Yes.
06:28I mean, I hope, you know, self-interest will lead to a reassessment.
06:31Actually, another thing that struck me about Trump's speech, since you asked, is the victimization, you know, like, as if the U.S. didn't massively benefit from globalization.
06:41And, you know, this lack of understanding of win-win logics in trades, for example, it suggests that people who are in charge are not competent to me.
06:51I also listened to Secretary of Commerce Litnock declaration about that.
06:55Like, his whole speech was about America first because we've been screwed over during globalization.
07:00It's not true, you know.
07:02But this must be for an audience back home, right?
07:05They have an affordability back home.
07:06And so speeches are never, I mean, they can be what they think, but it's usually targeted towards a specific audience.
07:13Well, it's also targeted to Europeans who don't take it, you know, nicely.
07:18Who do you think the president was talking to?
07:20He is always trying to, of course, address the MAGA crowd with any speech that he gives.
07:29And oftentimes the speeches, quite frankly, aren't tailored to that specific topic.
07:34They wander off to certain talking points that he wants to hit on.
07:38The other moment that really stuck out for me was the Board of Peace signing.
07:42I mean, you had all of the big Western leaders staying away from it.
07:47Germany, France, Italy, UK, etc.
07:50And so that was a moment that really stuck out here this week as well.
07:53Yeah.
07:54And I think, Mark, I mean, Canada was then disinvited, actually, from joining the Board of Peace.
07:59Yeah. So overnight, President Trump, on his way back to D.C., tweeted that he was uninviting Mark Carney.
08:07After Mark Carney, of course, gave a very forceful speech here in Davos.
08:11It was one of the other speeches that people are really talking about.
08:13And, Professor, I mean, was this, again, President Trump trying to take a little bit away from the U.N.?
08:20Then they walked it back, that comment.
08:21Like, frankly, it's unclear what this Board of Peace will become.
08:25My takeaway is that, luckily, at last, the Europeans are standing up to a bully who's trying to, I mean, pay for play.
08:35Can you believe it?
08:35You have to fork out a billion dollars or something like that to join.
08:38I mean, what is this?
08:39This is not how politics should work.
08:42So I think it's good that at this meeting it looked like finally, you know, partners are stopping with the politics of appeasement
08:51and going for a sort of a more backbone.
08:54I mean, there was quite a lot of political appeasement, though, right?
08:57No one really said this is a – I mean, they kind of shied away, but it was – I didn't feel like it was a real standing up.
09:04Well, I think we saw a playbook that Trump uses often with big events play out here this week as well.
09:11He, before the event, blew everything up so that everyone was talking about him.
09:16He comes to the event, and there is sort of the appeasement from both sides a little bit, where they try to kind of agree with one another.
09:23And then on the way back home on Air Force One, he starts sending out social media posts again where he's poking at people.
09:31And that played out like that also with the NATO summit last summer.
09:34Yeah.
09:34What can you tell us about the bankers?
09:37I mean, we have quite a lot of stories saying that, you know, Wall Street felt – you know, possibly felt intimidated also by him,
09:43which is why a lot of them aren't speaking up.
09:45Well, you saw the lawsuit overnight against Jamie Dimon for $5 billion.
09:49People see that these actions, when they speak up, he lashes out.
09:55So there are people who are quiet in public.
09:59Privately, they will share their views, but they don't want to be targeted personally and also for their bank to be targeted.
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