Forget Trump & Greenland. Howard Lutnick Gave Davos Speech that Mattered
The death of globalization is the real headline from the international self-indulgence festival at Davos
Matt Taibbi reports on Substack
After Donald Trump spoke at the World Economic Forum in Davos this week, the obligatory headline term was humiliation. “Lonely Trump Humiliated as Major Allies Refuse to Be Bullied,” was one of two Daily Beast stories on the theme, the other being “Trump, 79, Croaks Through ‘Peace’ Grift Speech After 48 Hours of Ritual Humiliation,” under the tag BORED OF PEACE. Jen Psaki on MSNOW chortled over his “humiliating ramble,” while Chris Hayes declared him “isolated and humiliated.”
Coverage of Trump long ago devolved into an homage to Pee Wee’s Playhouse, when comic Paul Reubens would get a secret word from Conky the robot in each show. After, audiences would have to shout in unison at every mention of it. I remember being in a room of stoned teenagers shouting “PLACE!” at the TV in 1986.
Trump news cycles are the same, only anchors shout TREASON! or FELON! or DICTATOR! His address on Greenland, NATO, and Emmanuel Macron’s sunglasses was blasted for a hundred reasons, many legitimate, but the real drama came from a non-Trump speech. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick ripped his European hosts by declaring “Globalization has failed”:
Globalization has failed the West and the United States of America. It’s a failed policy. It is what the WEF has stood for, which is export offshore, far-shore, find the cheapest labor in the world and the world is a better place for it. The fact is, it has left America behind. It has left the American worker behind. And what we are here to say is that America First is a different model—one that we encourage other countries to consider—which is that our workers come first. We can have policies that impact our workers.
Pop quiz: how was the previous President received at Davos? He wasn’t. Joe Biden was the first president this century to skip the WEF. It was just fine with world plutocrats that the United States was piloted by a wandering outpatient. The last major American Davos speech pre-Trump was delivered in 2024 by National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, an unelected spooktocrat who declared that “major powers are vastly more interdependent than in any time during the Cold War” and pledged to stiffen “our ranks” at NATO. He earned nervous applause. German Finance Minister Christian Lindner meanwhile let the cat out of the bag, chiding European leaders that a possible Trump return required preparing for “fair burden sharing” under NATO, developing “capabilities to defend ourselves,” and returning to intra-European “competitiveness” economically. This damning speech was a de facto admission that Europe had been enjoying a world without American “competitiveness” for ages.
Lindner was preparing Europe for this week’s speech by Lutnick, which told Davosians the free ride was over. In onstage remarks and at an invitation-only dinner, the Commerce chief and longtime head of the Cantor Fitzgerald investment bank slammed former American pols for submitting to “lies”: that “offshoring was necessary, borders were not, and our national interest needed to submit to global lower cost of labor.” These remarks generated event-wide outrage, even inspiring Al “He’s Still Alive?” Gore to start booing and European Central Bank chief Christine Lagarde to walk out, though some dispute this.
Trump was abrasive and insulting and no one budged. Lutnick was rational and clear, and the WEF attendees who didn’t throw fits cried anonymously to media. Trump is surely hated, but on Planet Davos the most unforgivable sin is abandoning the globalism gravy train in favor of a return to national-interest politics.
J.D. Vance’s much-derided speech at a Munich security conference last February was meant to declare an end to the Atlantic security dream while knocking Europe for abandoning free speech and democratic rights. It could have been historic, if the Trump administration had held up its end of the civil liberties bargain…
The Lutnick speech is a similar moment. If it really marks the end of the globalization project, that will be a huge victory, no matter how insane our current political situation is. Think about the journey we’ve traveled in ten years…
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