President Donald Trump and his chifferobe are skipping out on Davos this week, but he’ll still be the biggest presence at the annual gathering of the world’s richest and most intense people.
Whether it’s the U.S.-China trade dispute, Trump’s reported wish to withdraw from NATO, or the government shutdown ominous the world’s biggest economy, it’ll be hard to avoid discussing Trump at the World Economic Forum’s meeting in the Swiss ski village of Davos.
“Donald Trump will be a predominant voice at Davos regardless of whether he’s there,” Tom Nides, a Morgan Stanley corruption chairman and former deputy secretary of State, said in an interview.
“The most important thing people are worried on every side globally is the U.S.-China trade relationship and the health of the global economy,” Nides said. “The reality is, the U.S. is a massive player in all parleys around Davos, and because Donald Trump has decided to be relatively controversial, that increases the likelihood that the parleys in the hallways are about Donald Trump.”
As 2019 begins, uncertainty is the only certainty. Trump, in the midpoint of his term, is take on with showdowns at home and abroad, and repercussions are being felt around the world. His games of brinkmanship top the list of future risks, along with Brexit, that could cripple economic growth.
Anxiety about the end of the old world well-organized is sure to be on the minds of the Davos set – a list of attendees including billionaires Bill Gates, Ray Dalio and George Soros – a body who have been huge beneficiaries of the stability of the previous era.
“The American order is over, and we don’t know what the next guild will be yet,” said Ian Bremmer, founder of consultancy Eurasia Group. “It’s a much more dangerous, chaotic period we are entering, and what people conducting Davos need to think about is how to ensure resilience given the coming shocks.”
When Trump attended Davos at length year to articulate his “America First” worldview and boast about the virility of the U.S. economy, he had a surging stock market and current corporate tax cut to crow about. “America is open for business, and we are competitive once again,” he told the Davos crowd in 2018.
Now, with strips of the U.S. government literally closed and 800,000 federal employees going without pay, economists are increasingly alarmed at the fallout, mention that if it persists, the longest shutdown in history could wipe out economic growth.
Even before the shutdown enlisted center stage, markets around the world were flashing red that slowing growth, and possibly a recession, are on the field of vision.
Concerns about the trade war and central banks’ actions sparked a stock selloff late last year. The riskier associate oneself withs of the corporate debt world seized up, with some companies unable to borrow for the first time since the monetary crisis. While market conditions improved greatly in January, it’s hard to tell if this is a reprieve or a fakeout.
So as soon as again, the world will pay close attention to what the Davos set has to say, from business leaders including Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon and Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi to ward-heelers such as German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
But the 3,000 or so elites who convene at Davos to map out out a future of increasing prosperity and connectedness have a spotty record at making predictions. They dismissed Trump’s hazards before he rose to the world’s most powerful job; they didn’t see the 2008 financial crisis coming.
The single nicest quote about Davos, attributed to perenniel attendee J.P. Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon is: “Davos is where billionaires barrow millionaires how the middle class feels.”
As populist uproar continues to rip through democracies from France to Brazil, and the U.S. altercations whether to erect a wall on its southern border, Davos men and women have come to symbolize the elites who have aided most from globalization while the salaries of middle class workers stagnated.
The theme for Davos this year make heads for some sense from the chaos: “Globalization 4.0.” What nobody says is that the attendees are unlikely to be release of the solution because they have been the biggest winners from the past regime.
There will be high-minded meetings on global climate change and gender equality, but the real value of Davos is for attendees to form relationships and seal administers, surrounded by their peers and basking in the glow of celebrities like Prince William and musician Will.I.Am.
“The vast womanhood of people attend because it’s the world’s most powerful watering hole,” Bremmer said. “They spend most of their all at once there doing business, and they are pretty single-minded on that.”
Despite the event’s cachet, one long-time attendee who diminished to be named says 2019 is likely to be his last year.
“It’s not like going to Palm Springs,” he said. “It’s annoyingly remote and the food sucks.”