U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer dismissed swipes at President Donald Trump from world leaders at the Davos summit on Tuesday, telling Fox News that backlash from "elites" is nothing new.
"This idea of the elites hating a populist president and the Europeans hating us, that's gone on for a long time," Greer told "The Ingraham Angle."
"I think Pew did a study a few years ago, and they showed polls for Americans overseas, and whenever there's a Republican president it goes down, it's a Democratic president, it goes up. That's just how it is," he said.
"These are cultural things, and we need to worry about what's best for the American people, and we shouldn't be worrying about whether the Europeans are going to say nice [things] about us."
The chilly reception from some allied nations comes as Trump turns up the temperature over Danish-owned Greenland, which he has said would be a significant strategic and military asset for the United States.
The president has threatened to impose 10% tariffs on Danish and other European goods to pressure a deal that would allow the U.S. to purchase Greenland, a move that has sparked sharp backlash from some world leaders.
"We need more stability in this world, but we do prefer respect to bullies. We do prefer science to plotism, and we do prefer rule of law to brutality," French President Emmanuel Macron said this week.
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Greer fired back at the remarks on Tuesday.
"We live in the real world, and it's not necessarily about what we prefer. It's about how we accommodate American interests. It's how we achieve the goals and objectives that the American people have," he said.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney also appeared to take a swipe at Trump while warning of a broader shift in global relations.
"We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition," Carney said at the World Economic Forum.
"Great powers have begun using economic integration as weapons. Tariffs as leverage, financial infrastructure as coercion, supply chains as vulnerabilities to be exploited."
