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United States President Donald Trump has delivered the first international speech of his second term, appearing via livestream before the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

Thursday’s remarks, however, took a combative approach to international diplomacy as he once again threatened tariffs against foreign competitors – and even allies like the European Union and Canada.

“My message to  every business in the world is very simple: Come make your product in America, and we will give you among the lowest taxes of any nation on earth,” Trump said.

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

Trump, a real estate magnate and former reality TV star, faced a largely friendly audience at the Davos forum, known for bringing together some of the biggest business leaders in the world.

Many of those who raised questions after his speech were introduced as people Trump knew well – or even self-identified as his friend.

The Republican’s speech came a mere three days after he was inaugurated in Washington, DC, and his remarks echoed many of the points he raised in his inaugural address, once again promising to bring a “golden age” to the US.

He also repeated his usual list of grievances, including against his predecessor, former President Joe Biden, and members of Biden’s administration.

“They’ve allowed other nations to take advantage of the US. We can’t allow that to happen any more,” Trump said.

Here are five key takeaways from Trump’s speech:

Trump uses carrot-and-stick approach

The Republican Party leader led his speech with a broad appeal to business leaders across the world, calling on them to move their industries to the US.

He touted plans to slash corporate taxes and lower interest rates to create a climate favourable to business growth.

“My administration has also begun the largest deregulation campaign in history, far exceeding even the record-setting efforts of my last term,” Trump said.

He offered a trickle-down vision of US prosperity as benefitting the whole world.

“They say that there’s light shining all over the world since the election, and even countries that we aren’t particularly friendly with are happy because they understand there is a future, how great the future will be,” he said.

“Under our leadership, America is back and open for business. ”

But, he warned, there would be tariffs imposed on businesses that refuse to invest in this vision of US success.

Already, in recent months, Trump has threatened to impose tariffs of up to 60 percent on Chinese goods and 25-percent tariffs on items from Mexico and Canada.

Trump criticises EU

The president, however, reserved special ire for the EU, which he accused of imposing cumbersome regulations and attacking US businesses.

He cited recent antitrust cases against US-based tech titans as examples.

“ They took court cases with Apple, and they supposedly won a case that most people didn’t think was much of a case,” Trump said. “They won billions from Google. I think they’re after Facebook for billions and billions. ”

He implied that the cases were motivated, in part, on the companies’ country of origin.

“These are American companies,” Trump said. “They shouldn’t be doing that. As far as I’m concerned, it’s a form of taxation. ”

The US is the EU’s top trading partner, and as of 2022, the US had a $131bn trade deficit with the 27-nation bloc. According to US government statistics, the US exported goods worth $592bn to the EU and imported $723bn.

Most economists believe deficits are not necessarily a sign of trouble: The imbalance in trade can be the result of numerous factors, including differences in currency value and consumer spending habits.

But Trump has zeroed in on trade deficits as a sign of economic weakness, and he has once again pledged to eliminate them, as he promised in his first term from 2017 to 2021.

He also compared Europe’s value-added taxes to a “non-economic or non-monetary tariff”.

“ From the standpoint of America, the EU treats us very, very unfairly. Very badly,” Trump said. “They essentially don’t take our farm products, and they don’t take our cars. Yet they send cars to us by the millions. They put tariffs on things that we want to do. ”

Canada: Become a state or face tariffs

In the weeks before the Davos conference, Trump made clear he hopes to expand US borders in the coming years, bringing the Panama Canal and Greenland under Washington’s control.

At a news conference this month, Trump even refused to rule out “military or economic coercion” in his pursuit of those two territories.

But at Davos on Thursday, Trump spoke briefly about another country he has in his crosshairs: Canada.

Trump has repeatedly said he would like to see Canada become the “51st state”, provoking anger from the northern US neighbour.

“We’re going to be demanding respect from other nations,” Trump said at Davos, immediately pivoting to Canada. “We have a tremendous deficit with Canada. We’re not going to have that any more. We can’t do it. ”

According to the US government, Canada was the largest buyer of US goods in 2022, accounting for $356. 5bn in purchases. An estimated $2. 7bn worth of goods and services crossed the US-Canada border each day in 2023.

But Trump has pledged to slap high tariffs on Canada as a means of forcing the country to address drug trafficking and irregular migration across the border.

At Davos, however, Trump teased another way to avoid the tariffs.

“As you probably know, I say: ‘You can always become a state. And then, if you are a state, we won’t have a deficit. We won’t have to tariff you,’” Trump said.

Economists, however, have warned that tariffs can backfire because other countries may respond to the US with tariffs of their own — the cost of which would likely be borne by consumers.

Trump decries Ukraine ‘killing fields’

Despite his aggressive posture towards tariffs and trade deficits, Trump once again touted his self-described role as a peacemaker, pointing to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

The war broke out in 2022, and at Davos, Trump once again took the opportunity to blame Biden for allowing the invasion to unfold.

But he also pointed a finger at another target: oil prices.

“If the price came down, the Russia-Ukraine war would end immediately,” Trump said. “Right now, the price is high enough that that war will continue. You’ve got to bring down the oil price. You’re going to end that war. ”

While the war has driven up energy prices, it is unclear how Trump envisioned the oil market ending the war in Ukraine. Sanctions due to the war have already placed significant strain on Russia’s economy.

Trump himself has threatened further sanctions and “high levels” of tariffs against Russia if it does not end its war on Ukraine swiftly.

At Davos, he bemoaned the hundreds of thousands of lives lost on the battlefields there.

“That is an absolute killing field. Millions of soldiers are being killed,” Trump said. “Nobody’s seen anything like it since World War II. They’re laying dead all over the flat fields. ”

But, he added,  efforts to secure a peace settlement “are now hopefully under way”. He also teased a possible deal with Russia to dismantle all or part of its nuclear arsenal.

“We’d like to see denuclearisation,” Trump said, citing conversations with Russian President Vladimir Putin during his first term.

“I will tell you that President Putin really liked the idea of cutting way back on nuclear, and I think the rest of the world, we would have gotten them to follow and China would’ve come along. ”

Trump mocks climate-change policies

As part of his push for deregulation, Trump  once again lashed out against environmental policies designed to reduce carbon emissions and mitigate the climate crisis.

The US is estimated to be the world’s second largest source of annual carbon emissions, behind China. Those emissions, largely from fossil fuels, enter the atmosphere as greenhouse gases that capture heat and cause temperatures to rise.

Still, on Monday, Trump once again withdrew from the Paris Agreement, an international climate accord designed to reduce emissions. He had previously pulled the US out of the deal in 2019 during his first term before Biden rejoined it four years later.

At Davos, Trump once again described the Paris climate accord as “one-sided”. And he repeated his pledge to “unlock” US fossil fuel reserves.

“The United States has the largest amount of oil and gas of any country on Earth, and we’re going to use it,” Trump said, promising “rapid approvals” for energy ventures.

Trump also mocked his political adversaries for advancing a “Green New Deal”, a slate of policy proposals in the US designed to bring down carbon emissions.

“It was conceived of by people that were average students, less-than-average students,” Trump said.

He accused the architects of carbon-cutting policies of peddling sensationalism.

“Remember the world was going to end in 12 years? Remember that? Well, the 12 years has come and gone. It was going to end. It was going to all foam into earth. ”

Still, climate change experts have noted that 2024 was the hottest year on record – and if current trends continue, extreme weather could intensify, leading to deadlier disasters.

President Donald Trump began his second term by issuing “full, complete and unconditional” pardons to about 1,500 individuals involved in the January 6, 2021, attack on the United States Capitol.

He also commuted the sentences of 14 Proud Boys and Oath Keepers members who were convicted or charged with seditious conspiracy related to the violence.

The next day, Trump announced he had pardoned Ross Ulbricht, the founder of Silk Road, a dark web marketplace, who was jailed in connection with the sale of illegal drugs on the platform.

So how do presidents compare in the number of clemencies they have granted? Al Jazeera visualises presidential pardons in modern history, including some of the most controversial:

What is a presidential pardon?

Article II of the US Constitution grants a sitting president the power to forgive individuals for federal crimes, releasing them from further punishment or other legal consequences. However, it does not apply to impeachments.

Pardons are permanent once issued. A president cannot overturn or revoke a pardon that has been issued by a previous president.

A pardon may be issued before formal charges and after convictions. However, it cannot apply to future crimes that someone has not yet committed.

There are different acts of clemency, such as:

• Pardons – granting full clemency for a conviction
• Commutations  – reducing a sentence to a lesser one
• Reprieves – delaying punishment
• Remissions – reducing the effect of a sentence without changing its nature
• Amnesties – granting a pardon to cover an entire group of individuals

Which president has granted the most pardons?

The first presidential pardon was issued by George Washington in 1795 to leaders of the Whiskey Rebellion, a violent tax protest.

In more modern history, 14 US presidents since 1945 have together issued more than 9,000 presidential pardons and 6,500 commutations.

In this 80-year period, Harry Truman, who served as president from 1945 to 1953, issued the most pardons – 1,913 – followed by Trump, who has issued at least 1,644 in both his terms so far. Dwight Eisenhower (1953-1961) issued the third most pardons at 1,110.

Joe Biden issued the highest number of commutations at 4,169, followed by Barack Obama at 1,715. Other presidents since 1945 trail far behind Obama and Biden with Lyndon Johnson issuing the third most during his 1963-69 term when he approved 226 commutations.

Trump compared with Biden

In his four years in office (2021-2025), Biden granted at least 80 pardons and 4,169 commutations. In comparison, Trump granted 144 pardons and 94 commutations during his first term (2017-2021).

While Trump’s second term is just a few days old, he has already made a sweeping 1,500 pardons and more than a dozen commutations.

Trump has pardoned people who have had personal or political connections to him, including his supporters. In his first term, this included individuals implicated in the Robert Mueller special counsel investigation, which examined Russian interference in the 2016 US election, ties between Trump associates and Russian officials, and potential obstruction of justice by Trump and his associates.

Those convicted included Paul Manafort, Trump’s campaign chairman; Michael Flynn, his former national security adviser; Roger Stone, political adviser; and George Papadopoulos, campaign adviser.

Trump granted pardons and commutations to several of those implicated. Papadopoulos was pardoned in 2018 and Flynn in November 2020. Stone’s sentence was commuted in July 2020, and he granted a full pardon in December 2020 along with Manafort.

In his final hours in office in 2021, Trump pardoned Steve Bannon, who was charged with fraud related to a fundraising campaign for Trump’s US-Mexico border wall.

Trump has also granted clemency to rappers Lil Wayne and Kodak Black. The former was found guilty of carrying a gun on his private jet in December 2019 and received a pardon. Black was sentenced to four years in prison in 2019 for making false statements about carrying a gun. His sentence was later commuted.

Many of Biden’s pardons have been for nonviolent drug offenders, including almost 2,500 on Friday – the most in a single day, except for Jimmy Carter. He has also pardoned several members of his family, saying the measures were to protect them from politically motivated investigations by the Trump administration.

On his final day as president, Biden pardoned Dr Anthony Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and a prominent figure during the COVID-19 pandemic. He was widely criticised by political opponents, including Trump, for his stance on the outbreak. Biden said Fauci’s pardon was also meant to protect him from potential prosecution under the Trump administration.

Biden also commuted the sentence of Native American activist Leonard Peltier, who has spent nearly half a century behind bars after being imprisoned in 1975 for killing two FBI agents.

Controversial presidential pardons

Below are some of the most controversial acts of clemency granted by US presidents over the past 50 years:

1974: Gerald Ford pardons Richard Nixon

On September 8, 1974, President Gerald Ford pardoned former President Richard Nixon for any crimes committed during his presidency, in particular those related to the Watergate scandal.

Ford considered it a step necessary to move the country beyond Watergate; however, the pardon is cited as a key reason why Ford lost the 1976 election. Many felt that the pardon continued the Watergate cover-up by preventing the possible indictment of the former president, who had resigned before he could be impeached.

1977: Jimmy Carter pardons Vietnam War draft evaders

When Jimmy Carter was inaugurated in 1977, he pardoned those who had evaded the Vietnam War draft on his first day in office, less than two years after the end of the war.

With public sentiment running against the Vietnam War, many young men tried to avoid the draft. The pardon faced criticism from veterans and conservative politicians who had served in Vietnam while others such as the American Veterans Committee praised the order but said it should have included deserters too.

2017: Barack Obama commutes Chelsea Manning’s sentence 

Chelsea Manning, an army intelligence analyst, was convicted in 2010 of leaking classified government documents to WikiLeaks, which revealed American military and diplomatic activities across the world. Manning was serving a 35-year sentence, but it was commuted after seven years by Obama.

Pardoning family members – Clinton, Trump and Biden 

On his last day in office in 2001, Bill Clinton pardoned his half-brother, Roger Clinton Jr, who had pleaded guilty to conspiracy to distribute cocaine after being caught trying to sell it to an undercover police officer in the 1980s. Clinton’s pardon cleared Roger’s criminal record.

In 2020, Trump pardoned his son-in-law’s father, Charles Kushner, who was serving two terms in prison for tax evasion.

In 2024, Biden pardoned his son Hunter despite previously saying he wouldn’t. Hunter was facing sentencing in two criminal cases. In September, he pleaded guilty to tax evasion and in June was found guilty of illegal drug use and possession of a gun. He became the first child of a sitting president to be convicted of a crime.