Davos live legal updates: Donald Trump’s arrival at Davos

Donald Trump arrives in Davos today not merely as the President of the United States addressing a gathering of political and corporate elites, but as the central figure in the most direct confrontation between power politics and international law witnessed at the World Economic Forum in its modern history. His special address, scheduled for 2.30 pm Davos time, was originally expected to focus on domestic affordability policies, particularly housing costs. It is now widely anticipated to be dominated by his campaign to acquire Greenland, his threat to impose punitive tariffs on European states that resist him, and his repeated assertion that the United States “needs” the territory for national security purposes. When asked how far he is prepared to go, his reply was stark: “You’ll find out.”

That sentence alone reverberates far beyond the Alpine conference halls. It implies a readiness to move from economic coercion into the realm of strategic compulsion. It is against this backdrop that Emmanuel Macron has warned of a global shift “toward autocracy against democracy” and toward “a world without rules where international law is trampled underfoot, where the only law seems to be the strongest and imperial ambitions are resurfacing”. Mark Carney has declared that “the old order is not coming back” and that the world is experiencing “a rupture, not a transition”. Gavin Newsom has reduced the matter to brutal clarity, observing that with Trump “you mate with him or he devours you”.

These are not rhetorical flourishes. They are assessments of a legal crisis unfolding in real time.

Greenland is an autonomous territory within the Kingdom of Denmark. Its people possess the right to self determination under Article 1 of the United Nations Charter and under the two International Covenants on Human Rights. Denmark exercises sovereignty subject to that autonomy. No external state has any legal entitlement to purchase, seize, or coerce the transfer of the territory. The prohibition on the acquisition of territory by threat or use of force is a cornerstone of modern international law, codified in Article 2(4) of the UN Charter and reaffirmed in countless resolutions and judgments of the International Court of Justice.

Trump’s threat to impose tariffs on European states that oppose his acquisition of Greenland is therefore not a conventional trade dispute. It is economic coercion aimed at altering territorial sovereignty.

In legal terms, this is explosive.

Under the World Trade Organization framework, to which the United States and the European Union are parties, tariffs must comply with principles of non discrimination and most favoured nation treatment. Security exceptions exist, but they are narrowly construed and intended for genuine emergencies. Conditioning market access on the surrender of territory would place the United States in direct violation of both trade law and the general prohibition on intervention in the internal affairs of states.

The President’s repeated claim that Greenland is “imperative for national and world security” does not alter this analysis. International law does not recognise unilateral declarations of necessity as a licence to rewrite borders. The doctrine of necessity, as articulated by the International Law Commission, is tightly circumscribed and cannot justify the permanent acquisition of another state’s territory.

Nor does the rhetoric of inevitability change the facts. When Trump says “there can be no going back” and that “everyone agrees”, he is not describing a legal consensus. He is describing a political ambition.

Davos therefore becomes more than a forum for economic dialogue. It becomes a courtroom without judges, in which the legitimacy of the post 1945 legal order is being tested before the eyes of investors, governments, and the global public.

The presence of other leaders today only sharpens this contrast. Abdel Fattah El Sisi will address the forum in the morning, followed by sessions on whether Russia can sustain a wartime economy and whether Europe can defend itself. Jensen Huang of NVIDIA and Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase will speak on technology and finance. Mohammad Mustafa, Prime Minister of the Palestinian National Authority, will address the assembly shortly before Trump takes the stage. Javier Milei, Trump’s ideological ally in Argentina, will follow him.

The programme itself reads like a map of global fault lines: war economies, European defence, financial stability, Middle Eastern governance, and finally, the assertion of unilateral power.

From a legal perspective, Trump’s approach to Greenland mirrors his stance on the Chagos Islands and on tariffs more broadly. He has denounced the United Kingdom’s decision to return the Chagos Islands to Mauritius as “great stupidity”, despite that decision being the direct result of an International Court of Justice advisory opinion finding that British administration of the territory was unlawful. He has threatened to sanction allies, including the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, the Netherlands, and Finland, unless they comply with his territorial demands.

This pattern reveals a coherent doctrine: law is subordinate to leverage.

If this doctrine is articulated openly at Davos, the implications will be profound.

First, it will place the United States in open ideological conflict with the European Union, whose legal identity is built upon the primacy of law over power. The EU treaties are explicit that international law and the UN Charter form part of the Union’s constitutional foundation. European leaders cannot acquiesce to territorial coercion without undermining their own legal order.

Second, it will weaken the already fragile authority of the World Trade Organization. If tariffs become tools for extorting territory, the distinction between economic regulation and strategic warfare collapses. Trade law becomes meaningless.

Third, it will embolden other states to pursue similar tactics. If Greenland can be targeted through economic pressure, why not Taiwan through semiconductor tariffs, or disputed islands in the South China Sea through shipping restrictions? The precedent would be global.

Fourth, it will destabilise financial markets far beyond the immediate fall in European indices and the surge in gold and silver. Investors rely on predictable legal frameworks. Sovereign risk is priced on the assumption that borders are stable and treaties are binding. Once those assumptions fail, capital retreats.

The safe haven flows into precious metals following Trump’s tariff threats are therefore rational legal reactions. Gold does not rise because of fear alone. It rises because law is being replaced by contingency.

Trump’s address today is thus not merely another populist performance. It is a test of whether the United States intends to remain within the architecture of international legality or to operate outside it when convenient.

Macron’s warning of a world “without rules” is legally precise. International law does not collapse in dramatic moments. It erodes when powerful states assert that compliance is optional.

Carney’s description of a “rupture” captures the same phenomenon in economic language. Systems built on trust cannot survive when coercion becomes normal.

Newsom’s metaphor of the predatory dinosaur, though colourful, captures the strategic reality: diplomacy presupposes reciprocity and restraint. Predation does not.

What makes Davos unique is that this confrontation is unfolding in front of the very actors who finance governments, insure risks, and structure global commerce. They are not passive observers. Their reaction will determine borrowing costs, currency stability, and investment flows.

If Trump doubles down on his Greenland ultimatum today, he will not merely provoke diplomatic outrage. He will place the United States on a collision course with the most fundamental legal principles governing sovereignty, trade, and the prohibition of coercion.

And if he retreats, even partially, he will confirm what markets have come to expect: that the language of inevitability is a negotiating tactic, not a legal reality.

Either outcome will reverberate far beyond the mountains of Switzerland.

Davos today is not a conference.

It is a stress test for international law.

It will reveal whether the world still believes that territory is governed by rules, or whether, in the words of the French president, the only law left is that of the strongest.