President Donald Trump will be delivering his address to the World Economic Forum’s annual event in Davos, Switzerland, this morning (Jan. 21). In the wake of his recent foreign policy adventures, one might assume an organization that prides itself on cooperation and amicability between nations would be suffering a bad case of the jitters right now. But as the clock ticks down, it’s worth remembering that crisis is just another way of saying opportunity.
The Bland World Order
Whether it is the machinations related to bug burgers, or quasi-socialist efforts to remove the heavy burden of private ownership from a supposedly overwhelmed global population, the WEF has been at the forefront of pretty much every kooky idea of the last decade. And despite its prominence as the grandest political and economic meet-up in the world, what has it achieved?
Like many (or even most) supranational organizations, the WEF suffers from three things:
At least 50% of the global population has a visceral dislike of it.
Any progress or initiative it tries to implement moves at a glacial pace.
Its officers and emissaries have to live in the real world.
Consider another of these institutions, the European Union. Just this week, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced a “historic” trade deal with four South American nations. She said, “This agreement sends a strong signal to the world … It reflects a clear and deliberate choice. We choose fair trade over tariffs, we choose a productive, long-term partnership.”
Most certainly a snub to Trump’s love of tariffs, but left unsaid is that this deal took 25 years to negotiate. Yes, a full quarter of a century – and it still has to go to the EU Parliament for debate on whether it will be accepted. Glacial, indeed.
So where does Donald Trump fit into this?
The Davos Dilemma
Casting back to Trump’s attendance at the 2018 WEF Davos event, the world’s media expected the president to be treated as a pariah – after all, the Fourth Estate had just spent 12 months telling all who would listen that he was a deranged madman. What a surprise, then, that he was not only warmly welcomed but also his jabs at the “fake news” media were echoed by the WEF upper echelons.
Notable in his shock was CNN’s Jim Acosta, who said at the time:
“It was rather remarkable to hear the founder of this World Economic Forum also take jabs at the press and say that the president is the victim of biased interpretations and misconceptions. All in all, that was a fairly pitiful display I think to have so many business and global leaders here have those kinds of statements made with the president by his side and then nobody really take exception to that. That is sort of what we're living in. That's the environment we live in with President Trump.”
And here is where Acosta’s journalistic instincts missed the mark: Donald Trump is a catalyst for action in the world, and energy is what the WEF lacks.
The global world order has been trying to deal with an illegitimate Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela for years to no avail, and it has attempted to rein in the aggravation of Iran and come up empty. Trump, on the other hand, has taken it upon himself to operate outside of these organizations and create progress where they could not.
He is a wrecking ball to international norms, and international norms can survive only when they become defined by the boundaries others are willing to cross. If it were not for Trump and others like him (think Argentina’s Javier Milei or Britain’s Nigel Farage), these globalist events perhaps should just play videotapes from speeches delivered five or ten years ago. They are dinosaurs slowly plodding, while the new mammals run, build, and innovate.
Expect public finger-wagging from the WEF denizens and the press in attendance, but behind closed doors, the reality may be starkly different.
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