Trump Roars, and Davos Shrugs – POLITICO

The big difference was the way most people at Davos, including Americans but especially the non-Americans, were responding to this flamboyant but familiar show. The consensus reaction: Whatever.

This years Davos gathering featured several preoccupationssubjects that seem to come up at every panel, in every sidewalk encounterand it is striking that Trump is a marginal figure in all of them.

Some of the American delegates behave as if the world is America, with its 24-hour, 7X-weekly Trump obsession, while much of the rest of the world has simply moved beyond the Trump drama, David Miliband, a former British foreign minister who now heads the International Rescue Committee, said in an interview.

Christian Rhally, an executive at LinkedIn who emphasized he was speaking in a personal capacity, said Trump lacks the aura or the respect that a president might ordinarily command at Davos. Echoing a common refrain, he said Trumps Tuesday address sounded more like a campaign speech, raising the question of whether he was even trying to engage with the global audience. You cant ignore him but its nothing people really talk about.

Conversation was instead dominated by three seething conflicts that many participants see as existential in their long-term implications for the global order.

There is the conflict over the future of capitalism. Business and government leaders here look at polling in nations around the world, and see the tenor of the debate in the Democratic presidential campaign, and acknowledge that deep mistrust of free markets is likely to be an enduring political reality.

There is the conflict over the future of technology. This is partly about how vigorously to regulate U.S.-based giants like Facebook and Amazon. Even more, however, tech policy is being viewed through the prism of long-term competition between the United States and China over who will be more influential in shaping the global tech landscape on artificial intelligence and 5G mobile capacity.

Above all, there is the conflict over the future of the planet. In this case, the climate change debate came with an edge of generational tension. Seventeen-year-old celebrity activist Greta Thunberg commanded the spotlight here, who scolded reckless capitalists and feckless policymakers in her speech: Your inaction is fueling the flames by the hour, and we are telling you to act as if you loved your children above all else.

President Donald Trump speaks during a news conference at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. | Evan Vucci/AP Photo

It seems likely that Thunbergs perspective goes back far enough to realize that her very presenceand the celebratory attention lavished upon herwas an illustration of one of the historic roles of the Davos gathering.

With its mix of public-policy activists side by side with some of the planets wealthiest and most influential peopleall participating in a virtually round-the-clock blur of panels and partiesDavos has long served as a kind of buffering agent between go-go capitalists and do-good social activists.

For the capitalists, the theme of censorious self-criticism was especially pronounced this year. Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JPMorgan Chase, wrote in a special Davos issue of Time magazine that Capitalism may be at a tipping point, endangered in part because policymakers and business leaders have done of a poor job of helping those who have been left behind.

An annual survey known as the Trust barometer sponsored by the Edelman public affairs firmcollecting views from 34,000 people in 28 countriescaptured the downbeat assumptions that pervaded many conversations at Davos. Some 56 percent of respondents say they believe that capitalism does more harm than good. Fewer than one in three people in developed markets believe they and their families will be better off in five years time. Nearly 80 percent agree that elites are getting richer while regular people struggle to pay their bills.

Virtually every event or corporate branding project here was designed to associate the sponsor with the message of acknowledging gaps in equalitybetween sexes, between geographical regions, between capitalisms winners and losersand pledging to do something about it. Lets make business the greatest platform for change, read the banner at the Salesforce hub here.

The blas reaction to Trump showed how quickly the Davos crowd has gone through its stages of reaction to a figure who was elected in part with a pledge to halt the kind of economic and social integration that historically has been celebrated by the World Economic Forum.

Three years ago, just as Trump was about to be inaugurated, the general thrust of conversations with business and government leaders about him was one of alarm: What the hell has happened to America and what does this mean?!

Around the time of his first appearance at Davos two years ago, fresh off passing a tax-reform measure that many business leaders liked as pro-growth, people here criticized his divisive style but often added something like, You know, his actual record is not as bad as we feared and we can learn to live with him.

Now, Trumps style and substance seems to have been factored into peoples expectations alreadycreating a new normalthat Trump has become something people dont often associate with him: No longer especially interesting.

It is not that the Davos participants see themselves as simply waiting out Trump. There was lots of chatter here predicting that he would win re-election, though the reasons offered were not any more insightful than something you would hear on a random cable-TV panel (Trumps base is so loyal; Democrats may nominate someone too divisive, etc.).

Still, the general mood here made the self-oriented, rah-rah promotion of Trump seem off-key, irrelevant to the moment.

At his Wednesday news conference before leaving, Trump said he wished he saw Thunbergs speech but that she should turn her attention elsewhere from the United States because our water numbers, our numbers on air, are tremendous.

He is a moron, a European energy executive said of Trump. Do we have time for it? No. We have to change our whole company to get carbon-neutral.

Greta is great, said an executive for a Japanese manufacturer. Even if she cant deliver, she is needed to balance Trump in conversation and that seems to be happening.

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Trump Roars, and Davos Shrugs - POLITICO