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President Donald Trump plans to use a key address on Wednesday to try to convince Americans he can make housing more affordable, but he’s picked a strange backdrop for the speech: a Swiss mountain town where ski chalets for vacations cost a cool $4.4 million.
On the anniversary of his inauguration, Trump is flying to the World Economic Forum in Davos—an annual gathering of the global elite—where he may see many of the billionaires he has surrounded himself with during his first year back in the White House.
Trump’s attention in his first year back has been less on pocketbook issues and more fixed on foreign policy with conflicts in Gaza, Ukraine and Venezuela. He is now bent on acquiring Greenland to the chagrin of European allies—a headline likely to dominate his time in Davos, overshadowing his housing ideas.
Trump noted the Europeans’ resistance, telling reporters Monday night, “Let’s put it this way: It’s going to be a very interesting Davos.”
The White House has tried to shift Trump’s focus to affordability issues, a response to warning signs in the polls in a year where control of Congress is at stake in midterm elections.
About six in 10 U.S. adults now say that Trump has hurt the cost of living, according to the latest survey by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. It’s an issue even among Republicans, who have said Trump’s work on the economy hasn’t lived up to their expectations. Only 16% say Trump has helped “a lot” on making things more affordable, down from 49% in April 2024, when an AP-NORC poll asked Americans the same question about his first term.
