Davos: Trump looms large over biggest-ever World Economic Forum

Apart from the snow and the temperature Greenland does not have much in common with the Swiss alps. But the fight for the future of the island looms over the gathering of world leaders and businesses at the World Economic Forum (WEF) this week.

Indeed the timing of Donald Trump’s extraordinary threat seems likely to have had in mind this meeting.

Trump loves Davos. And that is beyond strange given the views of his base.

Last year, he beamed himself into the WEF from the White House, appearing before an audience of largely bewildered European executives just two days after his inauguration.

There was awkward shuffling as he mentioned his territorial ambitions for Canada and Greenland, and made an “offer you can’t refuse” to those importing into his country. Build factories in the US or pay tariffs that will raise trillions. “Your prerogative”.

He did it with a smile, however, apologised for not attending in person, and promised he would be there this year.

And on Wednesday he will be here, pushing the Team USA message at a time of bewilderment in much of the rest of the world, especially in Europe. Trump is due to speak at what will be the biggest Davos ever, driven by his presence and his policies, which have caused what one of the cerebral sessions of WEF might refer to using a snappy title like “The Great Global Disruption”.

Trump is the disruptor-in-chief, certainly right now. And he will be pursued by other world leaders and corporate bosses about his attempt to coerce Europe economically to sell Greenland. The Forum will be both the centre of the world this week – and totally bizarre.

“A spirit of dialogue” is the official theme, and while there are certainly opportunities at an event like this for conversations not possible elsewhere, there is much in the US administration’s approach that seems to be opposed to the call for global cooperation that is the essence of this place.

After all, Davos is not a great brand on planet Make America Great Again (MAGA).

The conference in the Swiss Alps is more often the brunt of attacks like that from Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who once claimed his state was the place where the “Davos agenda is dead on arrival” and promised he would resist its “woke banks” and “lab-grown meat”.

This year there have been suggestions that the White House insisted on the Forum playing down its typical green, global development and “woke” agendas in favour of hard-nosed business issues.

Meanwhile, America’s biggest companies have been shaken down to create a “USA House” in a church for delegates to celebrate the World Cup and the 250th anniversary of US independence.

Given the global arguments over borders and sovereign power from Greenland to Caracas to the Donbas, and the world leader’s present, it is not impossible to envisage some sort of summit like Yalta – the 1945 meeting that gathered the leaders of the US, UK and Russia to plot the defeat of Germany – on the sidelines.

Most of the G7 leaders will be coming, as will Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, along with 65 other heads of state and government, 850 of the world’s top bosses, and dozens more tech pioneers.

Trump himself will be arriving in the Swiss alps with five cabinet members, a massive entourage of administration officials, and the US business elite, from Nvidia’s Jensen Huang to Microsoft’s Satya Nadella.

But this is not friendly home territory for the US president. His coded hints about obtaining or even invading Greenland will not go down well with a European audience.

Instead it will be Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney who will represent the vision of North America that Europe would love to will into existence. Carney has ridden out the best part of a year of US trade chaos with a growing economy, having replaced the US with other trade partners and was recently spotted proclaiming a new world order protecting multilateralism with Xi Jinping in China.

The Chinese themselves will be present at finance minister level, offering up their country – the world’s second largest economy and now largest car exporter – as the world’s grown ups. It is a place where every year they seem to tap their watches and wait for their slow economic, technological and geopolitical ascent.

After all, let’s not forget the lessons of last year’s Davos, where the US triumphalism on display on Tuesday had been utterly superseded by the end of the week with news about a strange Chinese AI chatbot called DeepSeek.

It was at Davos a decade ago that I was first told about a quantum computer.

Then, last year at a session on car batteries I came away convinced that US and European car manufacturers had no chance of catching the Chinese technology this decade.

Many people rail against Davos. But it will be worth tuning in: the future can be found in some of its most brightly branded corners.