Xi Jinping defends globalization at Davos

China’s president launched a robust defense of globalization and free trade on Tuesday, drawing a line between himself and Donald Trump just three days before the US president-elect’s inaugural address in Washington. “The problems troubling the world are not caused by globalization,” Xi Jinping said in an address at the World Economic Forum in Davos. “They are not the inevitable outcome of globalization.” According to the Financial Times, the spectacle of a Chinese Communist party leader in the spiritual home of capitalism defending the liberal economic order against the dangers of protectionism from a new US president underscored the upheaval in global affairs brought about by the election of Donald Trump. Xi warned that “no one will emerge as a winner from a trade war” and pledged that China would not seek to benefit from devaluation of its currency or a “currency war.”