There's a cloud in the unmistakable shape of Donald Trump looming over the exclusive cabal of global elites at the World Economic Forum in Davos.
The ex-president once before darkened the doors of the Swiss alpine resort to which bankers, think-tankers, CEOs, political leaders and journalists flock in January to try to set a restive world to right. Or at least to make it profitable. Trump used the annual confab in 2020, just before the world shut down in the pandemic, to burnish his populist America First credentials and to make a cascade of untrue claims about his first impeachment.
But the ex-president's massive victory in the Iowa caucuses on Monday night sparked an outburst of concern in Davos that in a year and a day, he will be back behind the Oval Office desk and life will again become unpleasant for US allies. During his first term, Trump berated America's friends for not paying enough for their own defense, clashed with them repeatedly on trade, trashed the Iran nuclear deal and pulled the US out of the Paris climate accord. That disruption is likely to be a pale imitation of what lies in wait if he returns to the White House in November's election.
Before the private jet set reached Switzerland, Christine Lagarde, the head of the European Central Bank, warned that a second term for Trump would be "clearly a threat" to Europe. Tim Adams, president of the Institute of International Finance, told CNBC on Tuesday that every question he got as he walked up and down the Davos Promenade was, "Is he coming back?"
One of the most intriguing guests in Davos was Kevin Roberts — the president of the Heritage Foundation, the conservative think-tank that has turned itself into a laboratory of ideas for a second Trump term. He didn't disappoint in a session devoted to what to expect about the possible next Republican administration.
"I'll be candid here because I think I've been invited here to be candid," Roberts said. "The kind of person who will come in to the next conservative administration is going to be governed by one principle, and that is destroying the grasp that political elites and unelected technocrats have over the average person." Roberts added: "And if I may, I will be candid and say that the agenda that every single member of the administration needs to have is to compile a list of everything that's ever been proposed at the World Economic Forum, and object to all of them wholesale."
Later, in a conference call with reporters, Roberts said that he detected fear in Davos at the prospect of a second Trump term: "It is a palpable emotion. It is fear. It is snide. It's unacceptable." Roberts argued that the global elites who show up to Davos worry both that Trump is dangerous and that he could take away their power.
Not everyone at the forum was panicking.
Jamie Dimon — the JPMorgan CEO who sometimes clashed with Trump when he was in office and has urged donors to help former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley — complained that people were underestimating both the policy goals of Trump supporters and some of the achievements of the former president's turbulent term. "He was kind of right about NATO. He was kind of right about immigration. He grew the economy quite well. Tax reform worked," said Dimon, who, of course, is among the super-rich category who might do rather well out of a possible second Trump term.
After months of denial, there's a growing sense across the Atlantic that though Europeans would prefer Biden, they might get Trump. "It may also be the wake-up call that Europe needs," BlackRock Vice Chairman Philipp Hildebrand, a former head of the Swiss National Bank, told CNN. "We have to find a way to become more sovereign, in a sense, and less dependent, whether it's on China or indeed on the United States. It is a threat that worries people to a great extent, but it can also be perhaps a wake-up call."
Whichever one it is, the alarms are now ringing all over Europe.
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