The globalists attending the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos, Switzerland would like to ignore America’s success under President Trump’s economic nationalism.
But our President didn’t make it easy for them this year. After skipping Davos last year to negotiate an end to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s government shutdown, he flew in this time to deliver a half-hour address on the “blue-collar boom” in America over the past three years.
“America’s newfound prosperity is undeniable, unprecedented and unmatched anywhere in the world,” he proudly announced.
Since the last time Trump came to Davos in 2018, the United States has reached and maintained its lowest unemployment rate in 50 years. We’ve enjoyed rapid and continuing wage growth, especially among the lowest-earning workers. The American stock market has repeatedly set record highs. Trade disputes are going America’s way, arranged not for the benefit of a connected class of professionals at multinational corporations but for the good of ordinary American workers.
It’s easy to see why so many people were eager to play up Greta Thunberg’s tired rehash of the same sky-is-falling climate change act she’s been doing for months, despite not actually doing anything to address the supposedly apocalyptic problem. President Trump’s success runs counter to everything Davos has ever stood for.
“A nation’s highest duty is to its own citizens,” he reminded the Davos elitists, adding that “Only when governments put their own people first will people be fully invested in their national futures.”
“Today I urge other nations to follow our example and liberate your citizens from the crushing weight of bureaucracy,” the President added.
That’s not the most popular message at the world’s premier summit of bureaucrats, businessmen and intellectuals — all of whom are firmly committed to finding big, international “solutions” through regulation and subordinating national interests to the dictates of a global capitalist class.
The Trump boom came from doing exactly the opposite of what these people have demanded of every American president for decades. He pulled out of big international projects such as the Trans Pacific Partnership, the Paris Climate Accords and the Iran deal. He successfully renegotiated our biggest free trade agreement, NAFTA, replacing it with the USMCA. He used America’s economic might as leverage to demand concessions from our less scrupulous trading partners, most importantly China.
Every decision was supposed to spell economic disaster. Instead, his America First agenda created a strong and growing economy that continues to outperform economists’ expectations.
President Trump has also managed to keep carbon emissions in check while making this nation a net energy exporter for the first time in decades and creating thousands of new energy sector jobs. That was supposed to be impossible, according to the prophets of doom who have long insisted that developed countries such as the U.S. would have to commit economic suicide in the name of fighting climate change.
This president has given the American people control over their borders, their taxes and their regulatory regime, rather than hand those decisions off to experts on international “best practices.” That’s anathema to the Davos mindset, but it’s firmly in keeping with the proud traditions of American self-governance.
As Donald Trump pointed out in his address to the forum, “A pro-worker, pro-citizen, pro-family agenda demonstrates how a nation can thrive when its communities, its companies, its government work together for the good of the whole nation.”
The Davos crowd can try to ignore America’s recent success all they want. But nationalist, America First governance isn’t going away, because it works.
Harlan Hill is president of the Logan Circle Group and an advisory board member for the Trump-Pence 2020 re-election campaign.
