Spectre of Trump’s return chills great and good in Davos
European politicians and diplomats expressed alarm at the prospect of a Republican victory, but the Americans were more sanguine.
One name stalked the meeting rooms and late-night parties at the World Economic Forum in Davos this year. Donald Trump. Yet, rather than striking universal trepidation into the hearts of the gathered business and political elites, the prospect of the former US president’s re-election this November divided delegates.
On the whole, it was European politicians and diplomats who, publicly and privately, expressed alarm at the possibility of a Republican victory.
The American business fraternity seemed unfussed as to who would be occupying the White House by the end of the year.
Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of JP Morgan, set the tone by praising Trump for getting it “right” on some issues.
“He was kind of right about NATO. He was kind of right about immigration. He grew the economy quite well, tax reform worked and he was right about some of China,” Dimon told CNBC on Tuesday.
His remarks were the talk of the Alpine town and were seen by some Davos regulars as a cynical sweetener from one of the world’s most powerful financiers to a potentially returning president with whom he has clashed in the past.
Trump was not in attendance, but he was still inescapable. In the late hours of Monday in Switzerland, as Davos regulars settled into their hotels for the week, the former president recorded a landslide win against Republican rivals in the Iowa caucuses, setting him firmly on the path to win the party’s nomination for president later in the year.
Other reminders of his possible return as the world’s most powerful politician were everywhere. Anthony Scaramucci, Trump’s former head of communications, was ubiquitous on the Davos Promenade, while Josh Kushner, younger brother of Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, was pictured chatting to Dimon.
Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank that is behind Trump’s re-election campaign, pointedly warned the Davos crowd that Trump 2.0 would oppose everything beloved by the WEF.
“The agenda that every member of the [Trump] administration has is to compile a list of everything that’s ever been proposed at WEF and object to all of them wholesale,” Roberts said during a discussion about the US election.
“Anyone not prepared to do that, and take away the power of unelected bureaucrats and give it back to the American people, is unprepared to be part of the next conservative administration,” he told uneasy delegates.
European delegates were equally frank in their fears about what a Trump 2.0 administration would mean for American financial support for Ukraine, the European Union’s trade relations with the world’s biggest economy and the United States’s commitment to the climate transition.
“If we are to draw lessons from history, meaning the way [Trump] ran the first four years of his mandate, it’s clearly a threat,” Christine Lagarde, president of the European Central Bank, said.
She closed the Forum by calling on her compatriots to use “defence as the best form of attack” against Trump, issuing a rallying cry for governments to strengthen the bloc’s capital market.
Previous WEF summits have been a flashpoint for US-European Union relations. During his first term in 2020, Trump used a private meeting in Davos with Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission president, to give warning that America would never come to the military or financial aid of an EU member state if it was attacked.
“NATO is dead and we will leave and quit NATO,” Trump is reported to have told the Brussels chief.
Top of the European anxieties about Trump is his self-proclaimed admiration for Russia’s President Putin and the broader Republican threats to withdraw all financial aide to Ukraine in protest at NATO members failing to meet spending targets of at least 2 per cent of their GDP. If America yanks away its 80-year-long security blanket, hard-pressed European governments will need to find cash to fund themselves against a revanchist Putin.
Uncertainty also clouds America’s commitment to climate change, after Trump withdrew the US from the Paris climate accord in his first term and could repeat the move. He also has promised a 10 per cent tariff on all imports, putting Britain’s trading relationship in the line of fire.
Jeremy Hunt, the UK chancellor of the exchequer, told reporters that Britain would continue to push for “free trade” in the face of protectionism from its longest-standing ally.
Amid the European hand-wringing, Christian Lindner, Germany’s liberal foreign minister, said that EU member states should “stop talking too much about Trump and prepare for a second term … by doing our homework”.
As the politicians and business leaders departed on their private jets, it was Scaramucci who cautioned against the inevitability of another term for his former boss.
“There are three reasons Trump’s not going to be president,” he said, “and the first is that everyone here at Davos thinks he’s going to be president again. Don’t worry about the other two.”
The Times
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