Regularly derided as a talking shop for out-of-touch elites, Davos now has a bigger problem: what to do when your marquee guest and biggest draw is opposed to almost everything you stand for.
The gap between US president Donald Trump’s worldview and the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) vision of a rules-based global order couldn’t be starker.
In his first year back in office, Trump has withdrawn the US from multilateral bodies, relentlessly attacked the institutions that underpin the international justice system and used tariffs to bully allies.
[ Trump declines to say if he would use force to seize GreenlandOpens in new window ]
He is scheduled to make his first appearance at the summit in six years on Wednesday evening amid simmering tensions over his plan to annex Greenland, a threat that has triggered the biggest crisis in European-US relations in a 100 years.
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From a European perspective, there is growing unease about the appeasement policies adopted by European leaders which critics say have only worsened transatlantic ties and fed Trump’s megalomania.
Ironically, US Federal Reserve boss Jerome Powell is seen as a template of how to stand firm against Trump.
Trump will lead the US’s largest-ever Davos delegation which includes US secretary of state Marco Rubio; US treasury secretary Scott Bessent; US commerce secretary Howard Lutnick and Washington’s special envoy Steve Witkoff.
Trump vs the Fed: What does it mean for global trade and Ireland?
On this week’s episode, host Ciarán Hancock is joined in studio by the Irish Times economics experts Cliff Taylor and Eoin Burke-Kennedy.Tensions are rising between US President Donald Trump and the Federal Reserve. Trump has made it very clear that he is no fan of Fed chief Jerome Powell who is due to step down from his post in May, and that he wants the Fed to be more aggressive with interest rate cuts to stimulate the economy.Those tensions ratcheted up considerably when the US Department of Justice opened an investigation into Powell, and his handling of a $2.5 billion renovation of the central bank’s headquarters.Powell has publicly pushed back and warned the independence of the Fed is at stake, and senior central bank figures from around the world have also expressed their support for Powell. Cliff and Eoin also look at Ireland’s decision to vote against the Mercosur trade deal at EU level, it is still going to go through of course, but voting against it has led to charges of hypocrisy given all the talk from Government about Ireland being a small open economy that relies on the free movement of trade and services.Produced by John Casey with JJ Vernon on sound.
More than 3,000 participants from 130 countries will attend the WEF’s four-day event, now in its 56th year, but all eyes will be on the US president’s keynote address on Wednesday.
Trump tends to play nice when in Europe and his speech, according to White House officials, is likely to focus on domestic concerns (the country’s affordability crisis) and his economic agenda.
But he will also address European leaders directly, emphasising “that the United States and Europe must leave behind economic stagnation and the policies that caused it,” one official said.
Ahead of the event WEF president Børge Brende, told Time magazine “we know that President Trump [and his] secretaries are very much into deal making, and to make deals, you have to have a dialogue”.
Last year, just days after his second inauguration, Trump addressed the event via video link and was given a rapturous reception, in some cases by the leaders of countries and institutions he had spent the previous year thrashing.
Will the reception be different this time around? Has Europe’s bootlicking run out of road?
Also on the agenda will be Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine.
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy, who will address the event in person, hopes to meet Trump to sign new security guarantees but details of Washington’s scheduled bilaterals haven’t been available.
As the biggest meeting of business and politics globally, Davos is the showpiece event for globalisation and traditionally a target of leftwing protest. But in recent years it has become a bête noire of the right, the global version of Trump’s DC swamp.
The titles of discussion panels at this year’s event evoke the new geopolitical landscape. “Is Democracy in Trouble?” ; “How Can We Cooperate in a More Contested World?” “Can Europe Defend Itself?
