WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump said on Thursday that the “Golden Age” of America had begun and that it was “back and open for business” while addressing business and political leaders gathered at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland.
Trump, who joined the gathering via video from the White House, talked about declaring a national energy emergency as one of his first acts as president “to unlock the liquid gold under our feet and pave the way for rapid approvals of new energy infrastructure.”
“The United States has the largest amount of oil and gas of any country on Earth, and we’re going to use it,” he said.
He also said he was going to ask Saudi Arabia and OPEC to bring down the cost of oil.
“If the price came down, the Russia-Ukraine War would end immediately,” he said. “Right now, the price is high enough that that war will continue. You gotta bring down the oil price. You gotta end that war.”
The first day of the world leaders’ meeting on Monday coincided with the inauguration of Trump and the organizers were bracing for the president’s policies and their influence on the global economy.
That includes threats to impose major tariffs on China, Mexico and Canada, reevaluating military alliances and asking member countries of NATO to pay up more, and the implications of pulling out of international environmental treaties such as the Obama-era Paris Agreement, which Trump announced on his first day in office.
Trump also said he wanted to see interest rates come down, setting himself up on a possible collision course with the Federal Reserve, the agency which sets monetary policy- such as interest rates – independent of the White House.
“I’ll demand that interest rates drop immediately,” he said. “And likewise, they should be dropping all over the world. Interest rates should follow us all over.”
The Federal Reserve implemented a zero interest-rate policy between March 2020 to March 2022 as the country was dealing with the COVID pandemic. After that, the Fed raised interest rates 11 times to curb inflation. Eventually, as inflation eased, the Fed cut rates three times last year.