Lagarde Says Best Defense Against Trump 2.0 Is Strong Europe

(Bloomberg) -- European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde said the best plan to get ready for a possible return of Donald Trump to the White House in 2025 is to bolster Europe’s single market. 

“The best defense, if that’s the way we want to look at it, is attack,” Lagarde said, when asked how the continent should prepare for that scenario. “To attack properly, you need to be strong at home. So being strong means having a strong, deep market, having a real single market.”

Trump has cemented his status as the Republican frontrunner, winning the first GOP contest of the 2024 election in Iowa, a development that’s triggered concern among Davos participants.

Lagarde — speaking Friday on a World Economic Forum panel chaired by Bloomberg Television’s Francine Lacqua — has previously highlighted that his potential victory in November’s US presidential election could jeopardize global trade, support for Ukraine and the fight against climate change. 

“We are all concerned about it because the United States is the largest economy, the largest defense country in the world and has been a beacon of democracy, with all its upside and downside,” she said at Bloomberg House in the Swiss village earlier this week. “We have to be extremely attentive.”

Her calls for a stronger single market are a regular demand. On a Davos panel on Thursday, she urged a more powerful European securities watchdog as one measure to drive capital markets integration.

(Updates with Lagarde’s past Trump warnings starting in fourth paragraph.)

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