Business leaders such as Ken Griffin and Matthew Prince have already weighed in on President Donald Trump’s highly anticipated speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
Trump said on Wednesday that he will not use force to get Greenland, but is “seeking immediate negotiations to once again discuss the acquisition” by the US.
Trump’s ongoing threats against Europe over his desire to take over Greenland have been dominating this year’s Davos agenda.
All eyes were on Trump during his 70-minute-long speech, with billionaire CEOs — including Apple’s Tim Cook and Salesforce’s Marc Benioff — alongside heads of state filling up Congress Hall to hear what he had to say.
Here is how some of the world’s biggest business leaders have reacted:
Ken Griffin, CEO of Citadel
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Speaking on CNBC’s Squawk Box on Wednesday, Citadel’s CEO and founder Ken Griffin said Trump had an “important message to deliver to a European audience that, bluntly, needs to do better. Europe’s economic growth lags far behind America.”
“The commitment of the American people to defend our country runs deep. The commitment of the Europeans to defend their countries — if you look at surveys of the population — is not nearly as strong,” he added.
Griffin said he thought one of Trump’s “important foundational statements he made with respect to the justification why the US needs unfettered access to Greenland” was whether Europe would be there for the US if there was another war.
However, Griffin said that if the US does decide to “pursue this path”, discussions “should take time and be thoughtfully laid out.”
“Investors around the world do not want to see an escalation of the stress in global trade that has played out over the last 12 months,” the Citadel CEO added.
Peter Schiff, chief economist at Euro Pacific Asset Management
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Peter Schiff, the chief economist at Euro Pacific Asset Management, said it looked like “cooler heads prevailed at the White House.”
“So if the US can’t buy Greenland instead of taking it by military force, Trump will just hold a grudge,” Schiff, whose firm managed $1.4 billion last year, wrote on X.
“While that is a major improvement, it also means that if we do succeed in buying Greenland, we’ll massively overpay.”
Schiff also warned on X that a housing “crash is coming.”
“Trump basically admitted there is a housing bubble in the US. He also admitted his main policy goal is to prevent it from popping,” Schiff wrote.
“But once you recognize a bubble, the worst thing you can do is try to sustain it. The sooner it bursts, the less damage it will ultimately cause.”
Matthew Prince, CEO of Cloudflare
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Cloudflare’s CEO appears to have commented on Trump’s speech style.
“Last two times Trump spoke at Davos he stuck extremely close to the teleprompter. Not this time,” Prince wrote on X.
Ken Moelis, founder and executive chair of Moelis & Company
Speaking on CNBC’s Money Movers on Wednesday, the founder and executive chair of investment bank Moelis & Company, Ken Moelis, said he thought Trump “made a very good case” for a deal over Greenland.
“There was a real sigh of relief that he took military action off the table with Greenland. With President Trump, it’s unusual for him to ever take an option off the table, so that was a big sigh of relief,” he said.
Moelis described Greenland as “probably the biggest M&A deal in the history of the world” and criticized Europe’s approach to energy policy.
“You have to look at Europe and say their choices on energy policy have put them in the position they’re in right now which is fairly weak economically and in a global position. And I thought he made a very good case for that,” he said.
