US President Donald Trump’s highly anticipated World Economic Forum address at Davos is just a few minutes away.
Ahead of the high-stakes address, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent repeatedly urged global markets and European leaders to “sit back, relax” and “take a deep breath.”
“Everyone take a deep breath,” Bessent told CNBC.
Do not escalate … President Trump has a strategy here. Hear him out, and then everything will be fine.
The Treasury chief’s intervention underscores a critical fault line emerging between administration confidence in its Greenland strategy and a financial world watching American assets get hammered by trade war fears.
Why Bessent’s words matter more than they should
When a sitting Treasury secretary feels compelled to publicly tell markets not to panic, it’s because panic is already setting in.
Bessent’s remarks came directly on the heels of Trump’s escalating tariff threats; the president had announced 10% duties on eight European countries opposing his push to acquire Greenland from Denmark.
The immediate problem is that the markets don’t believe the administration’s cool-headed messaging.
Bessent’s plea for restraint echoed his rhetoric from April 2025, when Trump announced “Liberation Day” tariffs and were told those warnings were just bluster.
This time, investors and global leaders aren’t buying the narrative. The evidence is written across every major asset class.
On Tuesday alone, the S&P 500 plunged 2.1%, the Dow dropped 1.8%, and the Nasdaq fell 2.4%, the biggest single-day declines in three months.
The dollar index slid to a two-week low around 98.5, as foreign investors fled US assets en masse.
Ten-year Treasury yields climbed toward 4.27%, while 30-year bonds approached the critical 5% threshold at 4.9%, signals that bond buyers are heading for the exits.
What markets are watching at Davos
Bessent’s attempt to talk down risk reflected a deeper anxiety as European retaliation could spiral into something far worse than standard tit-for-tat tariffs.
The EU has signaled it could impose tariffs on $109 billion of US goods in return.
More threatening to Treasury officials like Bessent is the spectre of Europe weaponizing its massive holdings of US Treasuries and equities.
A Danish pension fund already announced plans to divest from US government bonds, a symbolic shot across the bow.
Bessent brushed this off in trademark fashion, calling Denmark’s Treasury holdings “insignificant.”
But privately, the Treasury knows exactly what’s at stake.
If European central banks and institutions begin a coordinated retreat from dollar assets, it could destabilize the entire financial architecture underpinning American borrowing costs and global trade.
Trump arrives at Davos on Wednesday morning with his own message to deliver, one likely to be far more combative than Bessent’s measured tone.
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