Fact check: Trump’s barrage of false claims in Davos about Greenland and NATO

(CNN) — President Donald Trump’s Wednesday speech at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland was filled with inaccurate claims – notably including false and misleading statements about NATO and Greenland, the self-governing Danish territory he is pushing for the US to acquire.

Trump also repeated numerous long-debunked false claims about foreign affairs, the economy and other issues. Here is a fact check of some of his remarks.

NATO

US benefits from NATO: Trump claimed: “So what we have gotten out of NATO is nothing, except to protect Europe from the Soviet Union and now Russia. I mean, we’ve helped them for so many years. We’ve never gotten anything.”

This is simply not true – even leaving aside arguments that the US has reaped important military, economic and political benefits from the existence of the alliance. NATO came to the defense of the US after the al Qaeda terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

The alliance invoked Article 5, its collective defense provision, for the only time in its history, and member countries formed a coalition to fight a war in Afghanistan alongside US forces. Member countries fought there for years, and many of them suffered casualties. Denmark, for example, lost more than 40 soldiers, one of the alliance’s highest per-capita death rates.

NATO members’ defense spending: Trump also claimed that, “until I came along,” the US “was paying for virtually 100% of NATO,” adding, “We paid for, in my opinion, 100% of NATO.” Trump’s “opinion” is factually inaccurate. NATO figures show that, in 2024, US defense spending made up about 63% of total NATO defense spending; in 2016, the year before Trump took office the first time, it was about 72%. Both figures are big, of course, but nowhere near the 100% figure he has used for years.

And the US contributes a smaller percentage to NATO’s own organizational budget. Under an agreed formula, the US provided about 16% of that budget at the time Trump returned to office in 2025. When he took office in 2017, the US was contributing about 22% of the budget.

Trump also said that, despite a NATO target of each member spending 2% of gross domestic product on defense, “most of the countries weren’t paying anything” until he came along. In fact, every NATO member was spending something on its own defense when Trump wasn’t president; total defense spending by non-US members was $292 billion in 2016 and an estimated $482 billion in 2024, NATO figures show. While it’s true that many members were slow to hit the 2% target, a majority of them were meeting it in 2024, NATO figures show, with 18 of the 31 members subject to the target at or above 2%.

In 2016, four NATO members were hitting the target; in 2020, the last year of Trump’s first term, it was eight members.

How NATO spending works: Trump repeated a claim he made on numerous occasions during his first presidency – that, before he became president, NATO countries “weren’t paying their bills.” While it’s possible to use the phrase “paying their bills” figuratively, it’s worth noting that NATO’s 2% target applied to countries’ own domestic spending; it did not create “bills” or mean countries owed money to the US, as Trump also claimed during his first term.

The NATO target was raised in 2025 to 3.5% of GDP on the “core” defense spending that was covered by the previous 2% target and an additional 1.5% on a broader range of security-related spending.

Greenland

Trump repeatedly referred to Greenland as “Iceland,” as he also did in remarks the day prior. But that wasn’t his only inaccuracy on the subject of Greenland.

He repeatedly referred to Greenland as “a piece of ice,” saying at one point, “What I’m asking for is a piece of ice, cold and poorly located, that can play a vital role in world peace and world protection.” He also said, “It’s hard to call it land.” While Greenland is icy, it is no mere piece of ice; it is a vast land mass where more than 56,000 people live. Trump made no mention of the local population, which is overwhelmingly opposed to a US takeover.

Trump correctly noted that the US built military facilities in Greenland during World War II when Denmark was occupied by Nazi Germany and unable to protect Greenland, but he then complained, “After the war, we gave Greenland back to Denmark. How stupid were we to do that? But we did it. But we gave it back. But how ungrateful are they now?”

Greenland was never a US possession to give “back.” The 1941 agreement that allowed the US military to operate in Greenland explicitly said that Denmark retained sovereignty over the territory. The agreement said, “The Government of the United States of America reiterates its recognition of and respect for the sovereignty of the Kingdom of Denmark over Greenland.”

It also said, “The Kingdom of Denmark retains sovereignty over the defense areas mentioned in the preceding articles.” And its preamble noted, “Although the sovereignty of Denmark over Greenland is fully recognized, the present circumstances for the time being prevent the Government in Denmark from exercising its powers in respect of Greenland.”

Trump did claim later in the speech that the US had Greenland “as a trustee” during the war, but he did not clearly explain that it was operating in a territory it explicitly said belonged to Denmark.

At another point in the speech, Trump said “there’s no sign of Denmark there.” The Danish military presence in Greenland has long been small, but it existed long before Trump’s push to take over the territory – and Denmark has stepped up that presence in recent weeks.

Other claims

Here are some quick fact checks of other claims Trump made in the speech.

The 2020 election: Trump, as usual, referred to the 2020 election as a “rigged election.” He lost fair and square to Joe Biden.

Investment in the US: Trump spoke of the “$18 trillion” in investment he claims he secured in his first year back in office. This figure is fictional; the White House’s own website uses a “$9.6 trillion” figure for “major investment announcements,” and even that figure is wildly inflated.

Tax on Social Security: Trump again claimed that he achieved “no tax on Social Security for our great seniors.” The big domestic policy bill Trump signed in 2025 did create an additional, temporary tax deduction for seniors, but the White House itself has implicitly acknowledged that millions of Social Security recipients will continue to pay taxes on their benefits.

Inflation under Trump: Trump said at one point that the US has “virtually no inflation,” then said later in the speech that there is “no inflation.” The US has inflation; in December 2025, prices were up 2.7% from the previous December (and 0.3% from November 2025).

Inflation under Biden, part 1: Trump claimed he is “driving inflation way down from the record highs of the Biden administration,” adding, “Every month they went up and up and up.” But inflation steadily fell month after month during the latter part of Biden’s presidency after rising to a 40-year high of 9.1% in June 2022 — declining to a 3.0% year-over-year rate in January 2025, the month Trump returned to office.

Inflation under Biden, part 2: Trump said Biden “gave us perhaps the worst inflation in American history,” adding that others say it was the worst in “48 years” but “I say forever” and that “I think 48 years is the equivalent to forever.” The 9.1% rate in June 2022 was a 40-year high that was nowhere close to the all-time high of 23.7%, which was set in 1920.

Gas prices: Trump claimed gas prices are “$2.30 a gallon in most states,” then added, “And we’ll soon be averaging less than $2 a gallon. In many places it’s already down even lower — $1.95 a gallon. Numerous states are at $1.99.” But no state had an average gas price on Wednesday below about $2.34 per gallon, in Oklahoma, according to AAA; only 10 states had an average below $2.50 per gallon. While there are some individual gas stations selling gas for below $2 per gallon, they are scarce; Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis for the firm GasBuddy, told CNN on Tuesday that the firm found fewer than 100 stations across the country below $2 (aside from special discounts) out of the roughly 150,000 stations the firm tracks.

Prescription drug prices: Trump claimed he is reducing prescription drug prices “by up to 90%,” then said, “depending on the way you calculate – you could also say 5-, 6-, 7-, 800%. There are two ways of figuring that.” While Trump has secured some deals with drugmakers for price reductions, covering a small fraction of drugs sold in the US, there is no valid way to calculate savings of 500% to 800%; if the president magically got drug companies to reduce the prices of all of their drugs to $0, that would be a 100% cut, while a decline of more than 100 percent would mean that Americans would get paid  to acquire their medications.

AI and power: Trump repeated his false claim that “I came up with the idea” that power-hungry facilities related to artificial intelligence can build their own power plants. There is simply no basis for the notion that this idea was Trump’s own; some AI companies began experimenting with on-site power generation during the Biden administration.

Safety in Washington, DC: Trump repeated his false claim that, after his federal takeover of law enforcement in Washington, DC, the capital is “the safest place now in the United States.” Crime has fallen, but experts on crime data say the city remains nowhere near the safest place in the country.

Trump and wars: Trump repeated his regular false claim that “I settled eight wars.” Among other issues, his list of eight includes a diplomatic dispute between Egypt and Ethiopia that wasn’t a war, some sort of dispute between Serbia and Kosovo that also wasn’t a war, and a war in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo that never ended.

China and wind power: Trump said, “China makes almost all of the windmills, and yet I haven’t been able to find any wind farms in China.” He added that China supposedly builds wind farms just for good optics but doesn’t “use them,” instead merely selling wind equipment to “stupid people.” In reality, China is by far the world’s leading user of wind power, with massive and numerous wind farms that are in active operation, and it is rapidly installing additional capacity.

Foreign countries and mental health facilities: Trump repeated his regular claim that unspecified foreign countries “emptied their mental institutions into the United States.” Trump has never provided any evidence for this claim, and his campaign and White House teams have been unable to corroborate it.

This article has been updated with additional reporting.

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