Has Trump killed Davos Man?
The WEF’s globalist gabfest has never looked more irrelevant.

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The annual World Economic Forum (WEF) arrived in Davos, Switzerland this week with unusually little fanfare. The world’s eyes were instead fixed on Washington, DC and on Donald Trump’s second inauguration as US president. Even those at the WEF were focussed primarily on the United States. As Reuters observed, ‘Davos becomes the world’s most exclusive watch party’.
Reports from Davos indicate that talk of Trump ‘has taken over all the dinner-party chats’, both ‘on and off the record’. His election has obviously rattled the self-satisfied globalist oligarchs, calling into question the viability of their worldview. In his inaugural speech, Trump challenged every trendy cause embraced by the Davos crowd. I wish I had been a fly on the wall to see the reaction at the WEF when Trump announced his intention to ‘Drill, baby, drill’ for oil. Or when he declared that ‘radical gender ideology’ will be banned in federal institutions, as there is ‘only male or female’.
It is worth noting that already during last year’s WEF, ‘the ghost of Trump stalked the forum’s halls’, as one report put it at the time. By then, it was starting to become clear that he was the frontrunner to become the Republican presidential candidate. European delegates were particularly nervous about Trump 2.0. Their anxieties were summed up by Christine Lagarde, president of the European Central Bank, who stated that the prospect of his re-election was ‘clearly a threat’. She closed that year’s forum by calling on her colleagues to use ‘defence as the best form of attack’ against Trump.
This year, only a few delegates have been prepared to go on record to criticise Trump. They have mostly attacked his decision to withdraw the US from the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change, with Germany’s economy minister, Robert Habeck, describing it as a ‘fatal signal to the world’ and ‘the beginning of historic failure’.
It is otherwise striking how readily the delegates seem to have fallen in line with a Trump-dominated global order. Many of those who clearly loathe everything that Trump stands for, and everything he did during his first presidency, are now coming to terms with the new reality. Joe Kaeser, chairman of the supervisory board of Siemens Energy, noted that while ‘Trump 1.0 was a lot of noise, little signal and less actions’, the incoming administration ‘seems to be well prepared to really change things for the global world’. Yet it still hasn’t prompted the same degree of panic or backlash.
The leaders of the WEF must be aware their influence is not what it used to be. While AI is a major fixation of this year’s programme, delegates must have noticed that those at the forefront of this technology will actually have been in Washington as Trump’s inaugural guests. As one commentary explained: ‘While the elites gathered in Davos, the counter-elites – a new generation of upstarts seizing the levers of power – had a triumphal coming-out party in Washington.’
This marks a stark difference to the WEF’s past treatment of Trump. Last year, it implicitly characterised the election of populists like Trump as the main threat facing the world. The WEF’s Global Risk Report 2024 euphemistically warned that there was an emerging ‘unstable global order characterised by polarising narratives, eroding trust and insecurity’. Of course, what the WEF mainly means by ‘polarising narratives’ is the emergence of anti-elitist and counter-cultural ideals that challenge the complacent ruling elite.
Coupled with the obsession over ‘polarising narratives’ was a near hysterical concern with ‘misinformation and disinformation’, which the WEF deemed to be the single ‘most severe global risk’, even ahead of armed conflict and natural disasters. The report shrilly warned that ‘foreign and domestic actors alike will leverage misinformation and disinformation to further widen societal and political divides’. It explicitly connected the alleged risks posed by fake news to the outcomes of numerous upcoming elections. It expressed fears that ‘the widespread use of misinformation and disinformation… may undermine the legitimacy of newly elected governments’.
What the WEF was really saying is that the ‘wrong’ kind of people and parties could prevail in these elections. After the Brexit referendum and the US presidential election in 2016 both failed to swing the globalists’ favour, the Davos crowd has been preoccupied with the supposed threat of fake news.
This time, the WEF oligarchy has taken a different tack. It hasn’t tried to delegitimise Trump’s election victory or blame it on fake news. The Davos elite understands that it has no choice but to live with Trump 2.0. Later today, WEF president Borge Brende will welcome the new US president to ‘join us digitally’ with a speech via video link. According to Brende, this will be a ‘very special moment’ to learn more about the new administration’s plans.
So much about the WEF’s apparent influence comes down to appearances. This is why so many billionaires, politicians and their hangers-on are desperate to let the world know that they have been to Davos. They want to be seen in the same room as the other very important people, saying and doing very important things. Now that the important people would rather join the court of Trump, Davos’s true irrelevance stands exposed.
Frank Furedi is the executive director of the think-tank, MCC-Brussels.
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