Davos 2026: Trump defends tariffs, says US will no longer ‘subsidise the whole world’

Trump: US ends global subsidy role

US President Donald Trump struck a defiant tone at the World Economic Forum in Davos, telling political and business leaders that the United States would no longer “subsidise the whole world” and that his trade policies were already lowering prescription drug costs for Americans.

Moving easily between policy and personal anecdote, Trump said US consumers had been forced for years to pay far more for medicines than patients elsewhere. That, he argued, was changing. “We’ll pay whatever the lowest price is around the whole world,” he said, insisting that drug prices in the US were coming down and would eventually fall everywhere as a result.

Trump credited tariffs for giving him leverage. Without them, he said, he would never have been able to force what he called fair treatment from America’s trading partners. He told the audience that tariffs had helped secure access to medicines without the US having to pay “13, 14, 15 times more” than other countries. “Without tariffs I wouldn’t have been able to get it done,” he said.

At one point, Trump recounted a conversation with French President Emmanuel Macron, describing how he warned that tariffs on French goods were inevitable unless France agreed to changes on drug pricing. The threat, Trump suggested, worked.

On trade more broadly, Trump defended tariffs as necessary and fair, even if some in the room had felt their impact. “You’re all party to them, in some cases victim to them, but in the end it’s a fair thing and most of you realise that,” he said.

He added that in places such as Switzerland he had initially imposed steep tariffs before easing them, saying he did not want to hurt people. Returning to a familiar theme, Trump argued that the US was “keeping the whole world afloat” and should no longer carry that burden alone.