Trump tells world leaders: Europe is not heading in the right direction

U.S. President Donald Trump said on Wednesday some areas of Europe are no longer recognizable — and that the continent was “not heading in the right direction.”

Trump lauded what he described as economic growth “like no country has ever seen before” in the U.S. during his highly-anticipated speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

“Friends come back from different places – I don’t want to insult anybody – and say, I don’t recognize it. And that’s not in a positive way, that’s in a very negative way,” Trump said.

“I love Europe and I want to see Europe go good, but it’s not heading in the right direction.”

His speech comes after global leaders condemned his aggressive approach to seeking to annex Greenland, which he said he would seek “immediate” negotiations over.

Market participants and many U.S. allies had raised the alarm about his Greenland position, including at Davos.

Trump used his speech to rule out military force, something he’d previously refused to do when asked.

The U.S. president said his administration believed “deeply” in the bond it shares with Europe.

“That’s why issues like energy, trade, immigration and economic growth must be central concerns to anyone who wants to see a strong and united West, because Europe and those countries have to do their thing,” Trump said.

“They have to get out of the culture that they’ve created over the last 10 years. It’s horrible what they’re doing to themselves. They’re destroying themselves, these beautiful, beautiful places,” he added.

“We want strong allies, not seriously weakened ones. We want Europe to be strong. Ultimately, these are matters of national security, and perhaps no current issue makes the situation more clear than what’s currently going on with Greenland.”

Trump, who has long advocated for making the Arctic island a part of the U.S., previously insisting there is “no going back” on acquiring it from Denmark. He threatened to impose a rising wave of tariffs on eight European countries if they continue to oppose his plans.

The U.S. president’s increasingly aggressive Greenland rhetoric has ratcheted up trans-Atlantic tensions, with French President Emmanuel Macron warning of a shift to “a world without rules” and decrying “bullies,” without mentioning Trump by name.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney told Davos on Tuesday that the “old order is not coming back” and warned “nostalgia is not a strategy.”

Carney said the new order was “a system of intensifying great power rivalry where the most powerful pursue their interests using economic integration as coercion.”

Trump took exception to Carney’s comments during his speech. “Canada gets a lot of freebies from us by the way. They should be grateful also but they are not. I watched your prime minister yesterday. He wasn’t so grateful,” he said.

“Canada lives because of the United States. Remember that, Mark, the next time you make your statements.”