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President Trump heads to Davos to promote 'America first'

Most world leaders anticipate Trump will continue his protectionist tone on trade and isolationist tone on foreign policy.
US President Donald Trump smiles as he arrives on January 25, 2018 in Zurich en route to the World Economic Forum in Davos.

President Trump arrived in Switzerland on Thursday, where he will promote his “America First” policies to the global elites assembled in this mountainside ski town.

Trump said before departing Washington that he's traveling to Davos "to tell the world how great America is and is doing. Our economy is now booming and with all I am doing, will only get better...Our country is finally WINNING again!"

The president is scheduled to arrive at the World Economic Forum's annual meeting here in the late afternoon.

Syrian filmmaker Feras Fayyad, whose Last Men in Aleppo documentary is nominated for an Academy Award in the Best Documentary Feature category, told USA TODAY on the sidelines of the forum Thursday that everyone was waiting to hear Trump speak on Friday because there is always “action” and a “kind of explosion” in his addresses.

“He says things that many people are thinking, things that are hidden under our skins and that we are scared about — and in doing so he exposes moral questions," Fayyad said.

Trump will join a large U.S. delegation that has already been making some waves at the forum. U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said in a briefing to reporters on Thursday that America is "more interested" in bilateral trade deals than multilateral ones — stoking fears that Trump's vow to renegotiate international agreements such as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) may not go so well.

In the same briefing Thursday, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnunchin reiterated comments he made Wednesday that the U.S is "not concerned" about the value of the dollar in the short-term. Mnuchin sparked a large dollar sell-off Wednesday when he said that the recent fall in the value of the dollar was "good" for trade.

Most world leaders, anticipating Trump would continue his protectionist tone on trade and isolationist tone on foreign policy, delivered at least a line or two in their own addresses about the importance of free trade and globalization.

“In a world that is full of fault lines and rifts, we need a shared future,” India’s President Narendra Modi said.

Tom Bossert, a Homeland Security adviser to Trump, told journalists Thursday that if Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was not careful, his country's recent air and ground attacks on U.S.-backed fighters next door in Syria could lead to a serious "miscalculation and escalation" in the region.

Turkish and U.S. military forces are both deployed in northern Syria with the shared aim of fighting the Islamic State and other militants, but Turkey claims that some of the fighters the U.S is backing include Kurdish separatist militants it opposes.

In an open letter to Davos attendees ahead of Trump's speech on Friday, the CEO of a South African business group urged participants to boycott the president's address over his recent vulgar comments about Haiti and some African nations.

Bonang Mohale, of Business Leadership South Africa, wrote that the boycott was necessary to highlight that an alternative was needed to a "world where walls, disparagement and hate dominate the discourse of the leader of the United States."

Trump will hold one-to-one talks with Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May and Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday.

Contributing: Donna Leinwand Leger

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