US President Donald Trump told world business leaders on Thursday to manufacture in the United States or face tariffs, in his first major speech to global leaders since returning to the White House this week.

Since his inauguration on Monday, Trump has said that Washington could impose steep tariffs on major trading partners Canada, Mexico and China as soon as February 1.

He has also signed a flurry of executive orders, pulling the United States out of the Paris Climate Accords and the World Health Organisation.

“Come make your product in America and we will give you among the lowest taxes of any nation on earth,” Trump said today, speaking remotely to the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland.

“But if you don’t make your product in America, which is your prerogative, then very simply you will have to pay a tariff,” he added.

In his speech, he added that he believed lower oil prices would help end the war in Ukraine instantly.

“I’m also going to ask Saudi Arabia and Opec to bring down the cost of oil,” referring to the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries. “If the price came down, the Russia-Ukraine war would end immediately,” he said.

“Right now, the price is high enough that that war will continue,” he added. Trump said he expected to have a “very good relationship” with China, but stressed that “all we want is fairness.”

‘Only two genders’

During his first administration, Trump engaged in an escalating tariff war with Beijing, and he threatened higher duties on the campaign trail as well.

In wide-ranging remarks, Trump also signalled he would exert pressure to bring interest rates lower. “I’ll demand that interest rates drop immediately,” he said. “Likewise, they should be dropping all over the world. Interest rates should follow us all over.”

He also spoke on the issue of gender surgery, saying he has made it “official policy of the United States, that there are only two genders, male and female”. He took aim at “men participating in women’s sports” while adding that gender operations “will occur very rarely”.

Since taking office, Trump has vowed an immediate overhaul of the US trade system, promising to tariff and tax foreign countries to the benefit of US citizens.

He has signed an order directing agencies to study trade issues ranging from deficits to unfair practices — paving the way towards further tariffs in the future.

During this appearance, the US president also took questions from Bank of America chief executive Brian Moynihan, Blackstone investment firm boss Stephen Schwarzman, Spanish group Banco Santander executive chairwoman Ana Botin and the head of French oil and gas giant TotalEnergies, Patrick Pouyanne.

Argentina’s Milei hails Trump

One of the Republican president’s biggest cheerleaders on the world stage, Argentina’s libertarian President Javier Milei, took the stage hours before Trump, delivering a fiery speech against “the mental virus of woke ideology”.

Milei said Argentina was “re-embracing the idea of freedom” and “that is what I trust President Trump will do in this new America”. He praised like-minded leaders such as Trump, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele.

“Slowly an international alliance has been formed of all those nations that want to be free and that believe in the ideas of freedom,” he said.

He also defended his “dear friend” Elon Musk. The US billionaire and Trump ally caused a stir this week by making hand gestures at an inauguration event for the US president that drew comparisons to the Nazi salute.

Milei said Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, has been “unfairly vilified by wokeism in recent hours for an innocent gesture that only means … his gratitude to the people”.

One of Trump’s backers in the business world, Marc Benioff, the chief executive of US tech firm Salesforce, was enthusiastic at a Bloomberg event on Wednesday.

“I’m very positive,” he said. “I’m just looking forward to seeing what’s going to happen. And it’s a new day and, it’s an exciting moment.”

‘Let’s not hyperventilate?’

US trade partners and rivals already had a chance to react in Davos earlier this week, as they brace for a second round of his America First policies.

Without invoking Trump’s name, Chinese Vice Premier Ding Xuexiang warned: “There are no winners in a trade war.”

European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen said Brussels was ready to negotiate with Trump.

But she also underscored the European Union’s diverging policy with him on climate, saying the bloc would stick by the Paris accord.

World Trade Organisation chief Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala called on cooler heads to prevail during a WEF panel discussion on tariffs today, warning that tit-for-tat levies would be “catastrophic” for the world economy.

“Please let’s not hyperventilate,” she quipped. “I know we are here to discuss tariffs. I’ve been saying to everybody: could we chill, also?”