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Donald Trump has called on Opec to push down global oil prices and insisted that central banks around the world lower interest rates “immediately” afterwards.
In a speech to executives in Davos on Thursday, the US president urged Saudi Arabia and other producers to lower the cost of crude oil, expressing dismay that they had not done so already.
“I’m going to ask Saudi Arabia and Opec to bring down the cost of oil. You gotta bring it down. Which frankly I’m surprised they didn’t do before the election,” Trump said.
“Right now the price is high enough that that war will continue,” he said, referring to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and suggesting that the elevated oil price was helping to sustain Vladimir Putin’s war machine.
“You gotta bring down the oil price, that will end that war. You could end that war,” he added.
Trump said that with the crude price lowered, he would “demand that interest rates drop immediately. And likewise, they should be dropping all over the world. Interest rates should follow us.”
The US president’s appearance via video at the World Economic Forum marked his first address to a global audience since his inauguration earlier this week.
He used the speech to insist that companies around the world manufacture their products in the US — or face sweeping tariffs on imported goods entering the American market.
Trump touted his economic agenda of radical deregulation and his plan to implement the “largest tax cut in American history”, calling it “nothing less than a revolution of common sense”.
His comments on the oil price came after he spoke to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on Wednesday. During the conversation, Bin Salman pledged to invest as much as $600bn in the US over the next four years.
But on Thursday, Trump said he would be asking “the Crown Prince, who’s a fantastic guy, to round it out to around $1tn”.
The price of Brent crude fell by 1 per cent following Trump’s comments, to just over $78 a barrel. A prolonged drop in oil prices could compromise Riyadh’s ability to fund more investment in the US and would make it more difficult for American drillers to increase crude supply as quickly as Trump wants.
The US president also touted the merits of “good, clean, coal” to power data centres needed for artificial intelligence. “We need double the energy we currently have in the US, for AI to be as big as we want to have it,” Trump said, adding that he would use emergency decrees to speed the construction of new power plants.
“Nothing can destroy coal — not the weather, not a bomb, nothing,” he said. The share price of Peabody, the largest US coal company, jumped 4 per cent on the remarks.
Trump also spoke positively about his relationship with Chinese President Xi Jinping, blaming his predecessor Joe Biden for the strained ties between Washington and Beijing and expressing hope that China could help end the war in Ukraine.
“All we want is fairness,” Trump said, adding that he was seeking a level playing field with China. As things stood, the relationship was “unfair” he added.
Trump also lashed out at the EU, describing fines levelled by Brussels against US tech companies for breaching competition rules as a “form of taxation”.
“They are American companies and they should not be doing that as far as I am concerned,” Trump said. “It is a form of taxation. We have some very big complaints with the EU.”
On Tuesday, the FT reported that Trump had threatened to double tax rates for foreign nationals and companies in the US to hit back at “discriminatory” levies on American multinationals.
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