As President Donald Trump and other top US officials walked the frigid streets of Davos this week, fear, and in some cases hatred, mixed with resignation at the administration’s actions.
While many attendees at the event said they found some of Trump’s stances on global issues valid, such as demands that Europe invest more in its own security, they were deeply offended by the way he and his team presented them.
“It was a little overwhelming. It was the complete Trump show that we had here,” said Conradin Cramer, president of the cantonal government of the Swiss city of Basel, after Trump’s speech on Wednesday at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF).
“He spoke out openly against Europe, against European values, and that scared me,” Cramer declared.
Business leaders were also nervous, with two American bankers admitting early on that they were worried about a full-scale trade war breaking out that would dent business confidence.
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Several participants stated that, in some ways, this was one of the most memorable meetings in the five decades of the WEF, which this year called “A Spirit of Dialogue.”
Trump struck a deal on Greenland on the sidelines of the event with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte and oversaw the signing of his new Peace Board, drawing several world leaders to Davos.
The president and other U.S. officials also said they were close to a peace deal in Ukraine, which came to the fore Thursday with President Volodymyr Zelensky’s visit to Davos.
President Vladimir Putin’s envoy Kirill Dmitriev also held talks with US officials on the sidelines, becoming the first Russian official to attend Davos since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022.
Several participants told Reuters that the annual meeting, the first since the departure of WEF founder Klaus Schwab last year, had been a triumph for BlackRock Chief Executive Larry Fink.
Fink, who is also co-chair of the World Economic Forum, used his influence to attract big names, such as billionaire Elon Musk, who made his Davos debut as a last-minute addition to the agenda.
Trump claimed that Fink turned everything he touched into gold.
In some sessions, moderators appeared to avoid tough questions and the agenda largely sidestepped topics that the Trump administration opposed. The program included four sessions that referred to climate change, while in 2022 there were 16.
Trump spoke for more than an hour, well beyond his allotted time on the agenda, and by the time he sat down for a moderated question-and-answer session, a small but steady group of delegates was already leaving the room.
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Trump’s agenda presents great importance
Several participants said that while Trump was a key figure, deals were done at Davos, as executives met with clients and consumers and discussed topics ranging from geopolitics and trade to stablecoins and artificial intelligence.
Francesco Ceccato, chief executive of Barclays in Europe, said the meeting had a “mix of geopolitics that cannot be ignored”.
But there was also “a lot of really interesting dialogue” around AI and related topics, such as investment risk and energy needs, Ceccato told Reuters.
Trump’s agenda permeated many of the discussions.
The US Secretary of Commerce, Howard Lutnick, provoked strong reactions when he harshly criticized Europe at a dinner organized by Fink, from which the president of the European Central Bank, Christine Lagarde, left the meeting.
The next night, at a Bank of America soirée, Lutnick met with CEO Brian Moynihan, according to a source familiar with the event at “Goals House,” where British finance minister Rachel Reeves played chess and Marcus Mumford performed live, including an acoustic version of Bruce Springsteen’s “I’m on Fire.”
As is common at parties and gatherings in Davos, attendees gossiped and exchanged rumors, although some generated anxiety.
Earlier in the week, a rumor circulated that mobile networks and the internet would be disconnected when Trump came to town.
It turned out that both the phones and the internet worked correctly.
With information from Reuters
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