Liz Hoffman

And it all felt like a bit of a middle finger to Donald Trump.

Also, he gave like the first couple of minutes of the speech in French, which really felt like standing up for, you know, a kind of multilateralism and globalism that Donald Trump has really tried to dismantle.

So, you know, that was kind of a call to arms.

And then right on the back end of it, we see this this huge trade deal between India and the EU.

And these are goods that, you know, in a different tariff regime would be headed here.

And, you know, will not be because of the tariffs that the White House has put on particularly India.

I would.

The EU has, you know, opened and extended trade talks with some of their other partners.

The thing that really crystallized for Europe in particular, but for a lot of other countries when Donald Trump started this trade war—

back in the spring of 2025, was they said, oh, we are really reliant on the U.S., right?

And that's what gave the White House so much of its power on the way in.

And, you know, they had some early success striking some of these trade deals.

But the alternative, if you were Europe or India or Japan or Canada—

is to say, oh, we are too reliant on the U.S.

and to go find partners elsewhere.

And, you know, the world is a big place and it is fragmenting, you know, one word that was, Davos always coins these slightly ridiculous phrases.

And one that I heard a lot last week was mini-lateralism, kind of as a replacement for multilateralism.

And that these big global trade webs that largely flowed through the United States, kind of as a global protector and hegemon and kind of, you know, good corporate citizen, are being replaced by these more localized, more bilateral agreements and arrangements that increasingly are going to flow outside of Washington and around Washington.

Probably at least, you know, to some degree in the near term to the detriment of American consumers.

Anytime, Ed.