Fact-Checking President Trump’s Davos Speech

The president gave misleading accounts of the U.S. role in Greenland’s history and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, among other claims.President Trump speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Wednesday.Credit...Doug Mills/The New York TimesJan. 21, 2026, 2:14 p.m. ETIn a speech at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland on Wednesday, President Trump rebuked European allies and reasserted his ambitions to seize Greenland.Mr. Trump also distorted Greenland’s history, attacked the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and repeated familiar falsehoods on the economy and his own record.Here’s a fact-check.What Was Said“After the war, we gave Greenland back to Denmark. How stupid were we to do that? But we did it. But we gave it back.”This is misleading. Mr. Trump was most likely referring to a World War II-era defense pact between the United States and Denmark. But that agreement did not give the United States sovereignty or control over Greenland.In 1941, after the Nazi invasion of Denmark, the Danish ambassador in Washington forged the agreement, giving the United States the rights to military bases in Greenland in exchange for protection of the island.Steven Press, a history professor at Stanford University whose research focuses on European sovereignty, said that the pact was “shaky legally, because it did not involve the Danish state beyond its ambassador to the U.S.A., who was in essence functioning as a government in exile.”Mikkel Runge Olesen, a researcher at the Danish Institute for International Studies in Copenhagen, acknowledged that even as the ambassador essentially “went rogue,” there was a limit to what he had agreed to. “But he certainly did not hand over the islands,” Mr. Olesen added. “He only gave base rights.”The pact contains multiple references to Denmark’s sovereignty over Greenland, calling the kingdom the “mother country” of the island. One passage reads: “The government of the United States of America reiterates its recognition of and respect for the sovereignty of the kingdom of Denmark over Greenland.”Had the United States decided to take Greenland by force by the conclusion of World War II, “there’s nothing Denmark could have done about it,” Mr. Olesen said.“But there would have been no legal basis for it,” he added.Mr. Press said that Mr. Trump’s statement was more accurate “if we believe sovereignty is mostly about sheer hard power more than treaties or popular consent.” But he said that “beyond sheer might-makes-right power politics, the U.S.A. had no authority to ‘keep’ or claim sovereignty over Greenland.”In 1951, after the Truman administration tried unsuccessfully to buy Greenland, the United States again recognized Denmark’s sovereignty over the island in a military agreement that allowed it to continue building bases there.“Danish sovereignty provided a legal basis for the U.S. military presence then and now,” Mr. Press said. “It is Danish sovereignty that endows the U.S. with military rights there.”What Was Said“Until I came along, NATO was only supposed to pay 2 percent of G.D.P., but they weren’t paying them. Most of the countries weren’t paying anything. The United States was paying for virtually 100 percent of NATO. And I got that stopped. I said, ‘That’s not fair.’ But then, more importantly, I got NATO to pay 5 percent, and now they were paying.”This is misleading. For years, Mr. Trump has incorrectly characterized military spending of NATO members, which make direct contributions to the organization based on national income. They also agree to spend a certain amount of their G.D.P. on their militaries.Mr. Trump’s complaints during his first term led to NATO’s reduction of the United States’ contribution to the common fund. The United States had paid about 22 percent of the alliance’s central budget, but the amount dropped to 16 percent in 2019 and to 15 percent this month.Member countries pledged in 2014 to increase their military spending to equal 2 percent of G.D.P.; they agreed to reach that goal within a decade. Only four of more than 30 countries met that threshold in 2016. That number increased to eight by 2020 (the last year of Mr. Trump’s first term), to 18 in 2024 and to 31 by 2025. While NATO officials and experts have credited Mr. Trump for the increased military spending across the alliance, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine also played a role.Mr. Trump is also correct that at his urging, NATO members agreed last year to increase military spending to 5 percent of national income by 2035. But that has not yet happened. At the end of 2025, no country had met the 5 percent target.What Was Said“So what we have gotten out of NATO is nothing, except to protect Europe from the Soviet Union and now Russia.”False. The alliance invoked its mutual defense clause only once in its history: after the Sept. 11 attacks.NATO allies actively engaged in the U.S. war on terror under Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty, which states that an attack against one member is considered an attack against all of them. NATO launched antiterrorism operations that deployed radar aircraft over the United States and naval forces that patrolled the Mediterranean Sea. Allies deployed tens of thousands of troops to Afghanistan, including 18,000 from Denmark, 43 of whom died between 2002 and 2014.Other ClaimsMr. Trump also made a host of other inaccurate claims that The New York Times has previously fact-checked:He wrongly claimed to have ushered in $18 trillion in investments. (The figure is double that of his own White House’s tally, and relies on broad pledges.)He claimed that the Republican tax and domestic policy bill he signed into law last summer included “no tax on Social Security.” (The law reduced taxes on Social Security income but did not eliminate them all together.)He falsely claimed that China had no wind farms. (China has more wind farms and wind power capacity than any other country.)He claimed that his predecessor gave Ukraine $350 billion. (Official and independent estimates are about half of that figure.)He claimed to have “settled eight wars.” (His role is disputed in some cases, and the fighting has not stopped in others.)He falsely claimed that grocery prices were “coming down.” (Prices are still increasing.)He claimed, impossibly, that the cost of prescription drugs had declined by “5, 6, 7, 800 percent,” or even “2,000 percent.” (Official and independent estimates show a rise in drug prices.)He misleadingly claimed that the Biden administration allowed “11,888 murderers” into the United States. (The figure included migrants who had entered the country over the previous 40 years.)He claimed, with no evidence, that his military strikes on vessels decreased maritime drug trafficking by 97.2 percent. (That is unlikely, according to data and experts.)Linda Qiu is a Times reporter who specializes in fact-checking statements made by politicians and public figures. She has been reporting and fact-checking public figures for nearly a decade.SKIP