U.S. President Donald Trump at Davos | Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images Trump lashes out at ‘perennial prophets of doom’ on climate ‘The American dream is back — bigger, better and stronger than ever before,’ US president tells Davos.

DAVOS, Switzerland — U.S. President Donald Trump dismissed climate activists as misguided “pessimists” in Davos on Tuesday, rejecting the consensus held not just by teenage campaigner Greta Thunberg but pretty much everyone at the World Economic Forum.

Boasting of his economic achievements, which he said had benefited American blue-collar workers, Trump contrasted the U.S. with the EU, saying, "While many European countries struggle with crippling energy costs, the American energy revolution is saving American families $2,500 every year in lowering electric bills."

“The American dream is back — bigger, better and stronger than ever before,” said Trump, who had warmer words for his latest trading allies in China ("We love each other,” he said, referring to President Xi Jinping) than America’s traditional European allies. He encouraged them to buy their fossil fuels from America to “achieve true energy security.”

Trump also told European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen that he expects “tangible progress” toward a trade agreement between the United States and European Union in the near future.

“It’s great to be with the president of the European Commission and a woman who’s highly respected, I have to say, and I hear a very tough negotiator, which is bad news for us because we’re going to talk about a big trade deal,” Trump said before their meeting. “And we’ve been talking about it for a while, and hopefully we can get something done.”

But the U.S. president reserved his toughest comments for 17-year-old Thunberg and a group of teenage activists accompanying her at Davos on the same day that he spoke.

"We must reject the perennial prophets of doom, they are the heirs of yesterday's foolish fortune tellers," he said, portraying the climate activists as anti-Americans who “want to see us do badly” and as luddites who want to hold back human progress via technology.

“In America we understand what the pessimists refuse to see: that a growing and vibrant economy focused on the future lifts the human spirit. We continue to embrace technology, not to shun it,” Trump said.

He paid the Europeans in the audience a backhanded compliment by saying their historic cathedrals “teach us to pursue big dreams and unbridled ambitions.”

Earlier on Tuesday, Thunberg told the same gathering of global political, corporate and media leaders that “pretty much nothing has been done” to avoid the potentially catastrophic consequences of global warming exceeding 1.5 degrees Celsius.

She was unlikely to be convinced by Trump’s pledge that the United States would join an initiative launched by the WEF to plant a trillion trees — which prompted polite applause — or his remarks that his administration was “committed to preserving the majesty of God's creation and natural beauty of our world.”

Trump made no mention in his speech at Davos of the impeachment trial that began this week in the U.S. Senate, though on his way into the conference center he dismissed it as a “witch hunt.”