Join Fortune Editors and special guests as we unpack key messages from President Trump’s address at the World Economic Forum and explore how his Administration’s new brand of American Exceptionalism will impact global trade and business. 		 
Mark Penn, Chairman and CEO, Stagwell  
Kellyanne Conway, Former Counselor to U.S. President Donald J. Trump  

In conversation with:  
Diane Brady, Executive Editorial Director, Fortune Live Media, and  
Kamal Ahmed, Executive Editorial Director, Fortune UK and Europe 

POTUS Speech Reaction & Analysis

Conferences

Welcome to Fortune Live from USA House here in Davos, Switzerland at the World Economic Forum. I'm executive editorial director Diane Brady. Today's event is actually going to kick off a yearlong initiative for Fortune called America Leads, where we look at innovation with and in the United States as the US celebrates its 250th birthday. We're excited to bring you insights from CEO. Those who are on the front lines of that innovation as well as leaders who are shaping it, we'll hear from Nigel Farage, member of the UK Parliament, Vaz Narasiman, who is CEO of Novartis. Our editor in chief Alison Chantel will sit down with Uber's CEO Dara Khosroshahi. I'll sit down with Robin Vince, CEO of BNY, and we'll be joined by the founder of Bridgewater Associates, Ray Dalio. But next up, and then we Also, of course, let me not forget we're going to have 7 time Grammy winner and singer and songwriter Jon Batiste. Next up we're going to kick off today's event with a live reaction and analysis on President Trump's address. First, let me introduce my colleague Kamal Ahmed, who is the new executive editorial director for Europe for Fortune. So thanks very much, UK and Europe, I should say in deference to where the UK is now, and we're joined today by Mark Penn, chairman and CEO at Stagwell, as well as Kellyanne Conway, KA associates and former counselor to President Trump. So welcome both of you, all three of you, of course. Let me start with just some general reaction to the speech. Obviously it was a big domestic component. We did touch on a lot of the hot button issues. Let's anchor it back to what should the business community be thinking about this, Mark, I'll start with you and then go to you, Kelly. Well, I, I think the first thing was, whew, OK, I mean, everybody thought the US military was gonna land any minute in Greenland, uh, and we were gonna have like combat against Nino, and I think the president, uh, does the magical thing that he always does, which is he raises the stakes. Uh, everyone takes the bait. He takes Greenland from something nobody talks about to a central issue. And then he brings it back down to, you know, basically he made a pitch that what has the US done for NATO and what has NATO done for the US, and fundamentally he said I'd appreciate it if we work out a deal on NATO. He didn't threaten tariffs. He didn't threaten. He took military off the table as though it was on the table ever, but everybody, everybody bet. Uh, and I think second you pretty much heard the State of the Union, right? You pretty much, uh, you know, maybe it'll be the longest State of the Union in history with President Clinton. We used to not want to go like more than an hour this, this. This one, but he pretty much covered his policies. I'll make, you know, one observation. I thought he did a really good job at the beginning summarizing the differences in policy with what he characterized the Democrats and characterized the Europeans. As about government spending, unlimited immigration, foreign imports, and higher energy prices, and what he said was basically he discarded all those policies and believes in basically firing the bureaucrats, said they found better jobs, cutting taxes, cutting regulations, tariffs to rebalance and create domestic incentives, and low energy prices, and he he did a nice job actually outlining those policies. And then I think again I think his central message, what have we done for you? What are you going to do for us? Greenland is a small price to equalize it. Finally, the interesting thing that wasn't there to me Iran. He did not say anything about Iran. Why? I think he's got ships heading to Iran, and this was not the time to say something. I can't believe the 20,000 dead protesters is not a major issue that he's not fully briefed and familiar with, but he chose this not to be the place for that. This is the place where he wants progress on Ukraine. And a signing for the border of peace, and I think that's going to be dealt with later. Kellyanne. Wow, well, Mark said an awful lot that I could have said and would have liked to say, and I agree with most of that, and thank you for having me. Thank you, Fortune, for welcoming me here today. I do agree that the very beginning of the president's speech, probably 10 or 15 minutes in, was a good recap of the first year of his second term, particularly when it comes to domestic economic vitality. I think when the president lays out the facts and figures he's at his best because I would challenge anybody to fact check what he was saying at the beginning. 52 records in the stock market, gas prices below $3.02 dollars in some places, things that really do hit everyday consumers. I know domestically, and this is important for the business community, instead of just gas and groceries as a central focus for affordability and inflation and rising prices. It's also going to be housing and healthcare. Gas and groceries obviously is very vexing and perplexing for many households and families, individuals, and commercial enterprises, but you can kind of figure that out, and many Americans have over the last 5 years. You can't do the same if housing costs went up, rent and mortgage 30% or less over the previous 4 years, if the cost of healthcare is causing so many Americans to do without and making employment decisions based on the benefits being offered, and I think that's a great message for a business in America as well, really international businesses. What was going to happen in 2026. And he said at the very beginning, Besson said it yesterday in two different at a dinner we happened to attend together and here on the stage that we can be 5 to 6% GDP. These numbers are unheard of. They certainly aren't predicted. Forget about the naysayers and the critics and the gloom and doom folks. The president's talking about boom, not doom and gloom. And it's after you've been through what he's been through, it really just it falls on hollow. It sounds very hollow. It sounds very negative. It doesn't mean he doesn't care what other people think and won't take that into account, of course he would. He came here with an olive branch and said, let's work together. I'm showing you an instruction package. Look what we did in one year. We could do this together. But Greenland, you said over $200 million you were going to invest. You invested about 1% of that. Um, Europe, I got you to pay the 5% NATO dues, otherwise we wouldn't be in this together as much as we are. That's meant to be for the common economic and military, um, cooperation and also vitality. So let me, if you don't mind, and thank you for that insight. I appreciate it. I want to bring in the view from Europe. I know Kamal, you don't represent the whole continent, of course, and uh there's, but I, I do think that. Clearly one of that that permeated the talk that he just gave. It's something we've been hearing a lot here in Davos. You and I have been speaking with a lot of European CEOs. Give us a sense as to what the reaction would be to this speech. Is this what they expected? I think Mark's absolutely right. This actually took the temperature down, not put it up, and I think, as Mark says, lots of us were expecting it to go down in the way he does. I was here in 2018 when Donald Trump came, came to speak, and he actually spoke again about America first but not America alone, a sentence that he used in this address. I think there's a fundamental issue though, which is maybe difficult to understand from America. As part of the established voice of Europe, and I think we need to be really clear, and we'll hear from Nigel Farage, the leader of reform in the UK after this panel, there isn't just one block of voice from the European Union and from the United Kingdom, there are different voices, but the established voice in Europe is still wedded to a model. For very significant reasons, because it is a model that brought peace to Europe. It involved America and American military strength and economic strength, and it also involved free trade. Free trade to Europeans, or to the established view, means peace. And that is very different from the American approach to tariffs, where tariffs was about income and also didn't have as developed an income tax system until 1913. And so there is a very different language from the European establishment which you've been really hearing. Ursula von der Leyen from Macron. A little less strongly from Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister of the UK, and I think for business leaders it's explaining that different gut response to the idea of your nation's first because we still Remember the language of the first half of the 20th century and the fact that Europe has been at war for many centuries over that line in which NATO and such were formed, but I think what we'll hear from Mr. Farage next is that there is a new drumbeat. Which is much more sympathetic to the journey that the President is on, and I think that one of the clever things about the President, which we don't see much here, we don't see as much of the president in the way that you see him regularly in America, is that he ties it back to everyday what you might call mom and pop politics. He spoke about the restaurants in Washington and there's going to be some new grass planted, and wasn't it great to see, you know, he ties the narrative back to real people, which I think is something that could be a lesson there for many of the European leaders. I love that. And let me, before we go. To Nigel Farage, I want to ask Mark Kellyanne. Let me bring in another leader. Mark Carney spoke about a new world order, the Canadian Prime Minister. If you think the order that the post-World War II order has changed, and certainly on drug prices we were talking about how the rest of the world pays relative to the states, what's the advice you have in In terms of how to be looking at navigating this new world, the one that President Trump laid out, the one that the Europeans are now talking about, and certainly one that we heard yesterday from the Canadian leader. Thoughts as to what that world order looks like and how you grow in it? Well, look, I think the number one thing is that Trump is setting the agenda here at Davos and for the world order. But he's not really setting a discordant world order. He's saying we need to reset the balance. He's saying that, you know, this whole thing about Switzerland and the 41 billion, he said, look, you all have been taking advantage of America. You're going to have to buck it up. And on the drug prices, what he said was, I didn't ask you to pay, you know, 100. Times I want you to pay something higher so that our prices could be lower and that we both win and we all get better drugs, but what he said consistently was not that I want to overturn, take you over. What he said is I want to rebalance the economy, and that was the message. And when I think that some of the politicians overreact and expect to get domestic political reaction by that overreaction, I think they're going to be mistaken. Let me move to Kellyanne. What you have some final thoughts if I had boiled down the theory of the case for the first year, and really Trump too, it's this investing in America. It's his message to countries, companies, cities, individuals, whether it undergirds his tariff and trade policy, clearly the sharpest tool in his well-stocked arsenal, whether it's what he's saying to companies who are coming in, support us on the one big beautiful bill, I'm glad he went beyond no taxes on tips, overtime, Social Security. Everyone knows that what they don't know and love in our polling is the 100% expensing and the deduct. Stability and the factories and facilities and doubling the child tax credit. People like all the benefits in there for employers because they know it benefits them. It benefited in time, the first tax cut and jobs act. One last important thing Dreg important. The one success, and I think moving forward that doesn't get enough credit that we can all be part of is energy. This is probably the. Sort of the under talked about underrated success of the first year we had LNG permits paused that only enriched and empowered Putin to sell power to energy to Europe, including Eastern Europe. The EU is still buying Russian oil. India has gotten a little better. Went from 1% to 22% because it got cheaper. Brazil, India, China still buying Russian oil. That's got to change. I think there's an important Lindsey Graham deal about that made with 85 co-sponsors, very bipartisan. The energy policy stopping the war on fossil fuels. I think replacing ESG and DEI and all of that with good old fashioned USA, stopping the war on fracking, producing again, and encouraging other companies, other countries to produce, but go back to investing in America. It undergirds everything he's saying. OK, great. Listen, this is just a taste, of course, the conversations to be continued, and thank you again for joining us. We have a full afternoon and thank you. Please join me in thanking Kellyanne and Mark, and I will leave you on stage tomorrow for the next interview. Thanks again.