President Trump on Thursday told foreign business leaders and world government officials gathered at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland that the war in Ukraine has got to end. 

“Our efforts to secure a peace settlement between Russia and Ukraine are now hopefully under way,” he said in a virtual address beamed from the White House to Davos. Mr. Trump said it is “so important to get that done,” calling Ukraine an “absolute killing field.” 

“It’s time to end it,” he added.

The president said he “would like to be able to meet with President Putin soon to get that war ended. That’s not from the standpoint of the economy or anything else. It’s from the standpoint of millions of lives are being wasted.”

Mr. Trump also wants the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) to play a role in ending the war. 

“If the price came down, the Russia-Ukraine war would end immediately,” he told more than 1,000 executives, officials and others from around the world. “Right now, the price is high enough that that war will continue. You got to bring down the oil price. You could end that war.”

Mr. Trump, whose first official call as president with a foreign leader was Thursday when he talked with Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman, said he planned to ask Saudi Arabia and OPEC “to bring down the cost of oil, which, frankly, I’m surprised they didn’t do before the election.”

“That didn’t show a lot of love by them not doing it. I was a little surprised by that,” he said.

Mr. Trump also said he will demand that U.S. interest rates drop immediately, and urged other countries to follow suit. “With oil prices going down, I’ll demand that interest rates drop immediately, and likewise they should be dropping all over the world,” he told the forum.

“The United States has the largest amount of oil and gas of any country on earth, and we’re going to use it,” Mr. Trump said. “Not only will this reduce the cost of virtually all goods and services, it will make the United States a manufacturing superpower.”

The president said the U.S. is “moving quickly to bring back strength and peace and stability abroad” as he repeated his call for members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to increase defense spending by 3% to 5% of their GDP, “which is what it should have been years ago.”

He also targeted EU trade relations, decrying what he said was a $35 billion deficit. “From the standpoint of America, the EU treats us very, very unfairly, very badly,” Mr. Trump said during the question-and-answer portion of his Davos appearance.

Mr. Trump accused the EU of making it “very difficult” for America to sell farm products and vehicles to Europe, “and yet they expect to be selling and they do sell their products in the USA. So we have … hundreds of billions of dollars of deficits with the EU, and nobody’s happy with it, and we’re going to do something about it.”

The president also made a direct appeal — backed up by a tariff threat —  to foreign leaders. “Come make your product in America and we will give you among the lowest taxes as any nation on earth,” he said. “But if you don’t make your product in America, which is your prerogative, then very simply, you will have to pay a tariff — differing amounts — but a tariff, which will direct hundreds of billions of dollars and even trillions of dollars into our treasury to strengthen our economy and pay down debt under the Trump administration.”

On Canada, Mr. Trump said the U.S. is running a “tremendous deficit” in trade with its neighbor to the north. He said the U.S. does not need Canada for lumber or vehicles and once again warned of tariffs – which he said Canada could avoid if it became a U.S. state.

“One thing we’re going to be demanding is … respect from other nations,” he said. “We have a tremendous deficit with Canada. We’re not going to have that anywhere.”

On China, Mr. Trump said he “always liked” Chinese President Xi Jinping, even though relations were strained during the COVID-19 pandemic. He said his administration looks “forward to doing very well with China and getting along with China” and declared that denuclearization with Beijing and Moscow would be a top priority for the White House.