U.S. President Trump is to speak to an international audience for the first time after returning into the White House with a speech and Q&A by video conference to the World Economic Forum’s annual event in Davos on Thursday.

Switzerland’s commerce with the US is significant and any tariffs would meaningfully impact its economy, according to Swiss National Bank President Martin Schlegel.

President Donald Trump took a combative tone at times as he spoke remotely Thursday to an international audience of business leaders, politicians and other elites at the World Economic Forum’s annual event in Davos,

I was among 700 people in the hall to hear Donald Trump address the World Economic Forum in Davos. I wondered whether his blunt style landed.

Speaking before the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Trump said he’ll call for interest rates to be lower than current levels. A possible sign he is setting up a possible battle with the Federal Reserve.

​Trump’s image dominated the room from multiple screens. Below the movie-theater-size emperor at center stage sat five business and political leaders looking tiny in their WEF-logo seats. Once they might have been called “masters of the universe” themselves, but now they were just supplicants lobbing softball questions at the Übermensch.

President Donald Trump reportedly elicited gasps from the international crowd gathered at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Thursday when he suggested that Canada could become a U.S. state in order to avoid the sweeping tariffs he wants to impose.

"Come make your product in America and we will give you among the lowest taxes of any nation on earth ... But if you don't make your product in America, which is your prerogative, then very simply you will have to pay a tariff," Trump said.

"Come make your product in America and we will give you among the lowest taxes of any nation on earth ... But if you don't make your product in America, which is your prerogative, then very simply you will have to pay a tariff," Trump said.

Gold exports from Switzerland rose year on year in December as supplies to the United States soared to the highest since March 2022 and offset lower deliveries to top consumer China, Swiss customs data showed on Thursday.

On the campaign trail last year, President Donald Trump talked tough about imposing tariffs as high as 60% on Chinese goods and threatened to renew the trade war with China that he launched during his first term.