Davos In The Age Of Trump

T.K. ARUN

The summit of the elites feels different this time, thanks to Trump and the disruptions he is wreaking on the world. When the going gets crazy, in-person meetings reacquire significance for decision-makers.

Davos is back in the spotlight, not as just any old, tired networking event, but as a stocktaking opportunity for leaders of govts and businesses to survey the world being made and unmade by the 47th President of US, and assess the damage and figure out the way forward. His Wednesday speech there told off Europe for heading in the wrong direction, doubled down on wanting to acquire Greenland, took jabs at Canada and at windmills, and blasted Nato allies.

This was quite different from the sepia pics of Davos: where the snow dazzles, the wine sparkles, to keep twinkling company with a discreet diamond dangling from a delicate earlobe, people shine with their natural brilliance, the consummate ease with which they decipher complex global problems gives their speech additional lustre, and, ever so often, sparks fly when conflicting convictions collide in the rarefied Alpine air. Lots of us carried such glowing impressions of Davos in the initial years of liberalisation and globalisation of the Indian economy.

Then, the annual summits of World Economic Forum became passé, with a proliferation of interactions of govt and business leaders as official and industry delegations crisscrossed the world, and multilateral gathering of G20, Brics, and other such multiplied. Even subnational govts assembled diverse business leaders, whose collective worth on the hoof ran to several hundred billion dollars.

Things have changed. The world has been turned upside down. Globalisation had created a populist backlash among its discontents in US, who had been left in the cold as manufacturing jobs got outsourced to China and white-collar jobs to enclaves in India and Southeast Asia. Trump has converted the losers’ angst and urge to isolate America from the rush of disruptive globalisation into govt policy, with the promise that wrecking globalisation would make America great again.

His tariffs, different for different countries, put paid to ‘most favoured nation’, the notion that any country would have to offer the best rate it offers to one trading partner to all other trading partners, unless as part of any special trading arrangement. MFN is the cornerstone of the multilateral trading system. Its broken pieces are being ground into finer particles and dust under Trump’s angry heel every passing day, as he threatens new slabs of tariffs on ever newer grounds – Russian oil, Greenland.

On the two previous occasions when a major credit rating agency downgraded US govt bonds, the vaunted gold standard of safe assets, panicked capital had rushed to US treasuries, strengthening the dollar. Under Trump, when a third rating agency downgraded US govt bonds, capital fled US, weakening the dollar. The dollar is in long-term retreat, the share of global currency reserves held in dollars on the decline, even as the dollar still commands the largest share. This is the reason gold and silver have lost their tether to gravity. If even the dollar is losing value, where to hold wealth, but in bullion?

Trump has attacked the rules-based global order that has been in place for eight decades. He has withdrawn from 60 global organisations, half of them linked to UN. His latest Board of Peace is an attempt to create a multilateral decision-making body in place of UN. For all its flaws, the UN framework gave a semblance of nations being restrained by and accountable to the comity of nations, abiding by commonly worked out rules than by the restraint of force wielded by a superior power.

The rules framed in the UN framework have been enforced, ultimately, by the military might of US, itself under the restraint, at one remove, formed by the nuclear arsenals of rival powers and the mutually assured destruction these arsenals together promise.

US, under Trump, no longer wishes to be rule enforcer. It wants to exercise power without being restrained by rules, and is prepared to wield its might against countries that do not have the military capability to retaliate, to have its way. This was the way of pre-world-war imperialism that annexed parts of the world as colonies, drained their wealth, extracted resources from them, used them as markets and exploited their labour.

The material reality of the world is very different from the days of colonies and metropolitan masters. The world is interdependent, intertwined by complex supply chains that snake across many borders, often repeatedly, generating jobs and incomes along the way and creating profits for all participants but mostly to the few giant companies that initiate the supply chains.

More people have been born and more of them extricated from the wretchedness of poverty and heralded into the halls of human creativity under globalised growth than in any period of prior history. Trump’s tariffs throw sand in the supply chains, disrupt production and consumption.

The information economy abhors borders, even as it submits to different national laws in different parts of the world. It transports intelligence, culture, prejudice, insight, innovation, technology, commerce, and finance across the world, very, very fast. Its drivers are, for the most part, US tech giants, who stand exposed as potential targets of retaliation against Trump’s wanton attacks on the world as it was.

Davos lets people who assess the impact of these changes meet others like them, and exchange views in person. In-person meetings are vital for Trump, as well, who looks for the right degree of obsequity in his interlocutors.

Davos will serve as a forum for leaders to discuss how to salvage the climate agenda from Trumpian obliteration. Europe and Russia will have a busy backchannel (can Russia join Europe in defending Greenland against the Americans?!). India and EU will give finishing touches to their trade deal. Davos is back!

About the Author

T.K. Arun, ex-Economic Times editor, is a Delhi-based senior journalist and columnist known for incisive analysis of economic and policy matters, based in Delhi.

The article was first published in The Core as Trump’s Imperial Turn Leaves India With No Easy Choices on 9th January 2026.

Disclaimer: All views expressed in the article belong solely to the author and not necessarily to the organization.