The annual World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland, opened against a backdrop of war, trade threats, and a rapidly fraying global order. One figure has dominated the week more than any theme or panel discussion – former US President Donald Trump.
Heather Stewart, the Guardian’s economic editor who has spent the week in Davos, paints a picture of an event that has fundamentally changed from its previous incarnations. The stable, rules-based global trading system once symbolised by Davos has been “swept away”, she says.
Trump’s unscheduled and controversial appearances have overshadowed much of the conference. His “America First” rhetoric and threats to use tariffs to force allies into line have left many European leaders shocked. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and French President Emmanuel Macron struck a similar note in their speeches, warning that the old international order has collapsed and countries must build new, flexible alliances to avoid being “on the menu”.
Nigel Farage, once a vocal critic of the WEF, was among the attendees this year, arguing that the globalists “have had it your way for far too long”. Heather says conversations about tariffs, economic nationalism and sovereignty, once marginal here, are now everywhere.
Davos remains an odd, intensely hierarchical bubble, but this year it has also felt unusually alive, as participants grapple with a messier international future. “Is it the start of a resistance? Or is it just acceptance that there’s a new reality? I don’t know,” Heather ponders.
One thing is clear – the world order that Davos once represented is gone, and the forum is struggling to reconcile its talk of cooperation with the realities of great-power confrontation.
