The elite of Davos agrees to Trump’s ultimatum

The world leaders, the bosses of the largest global companies and a handful of celebrities met this week in the small Swiss mountain town in Davos for the Annual World Economic Forum.

On the other side of the Atlantic, President Donald Trump started his political return as a new President of the United States.

“Nothing will hinder us,” he said, while promising to end America’s “decline”.

Towards the end of the meeting, President Trump was a telework directly from the White House webcam to transmit his message of world domination directly to the world elite.

While he charmed, almost seduces the public with a credible image of an in full swing economy about to reach new technological heights, he simultaneously threatened with customs of customs rights those who did not choose to move their factories in the United States.

Billions of dollars in customs duties for the US Treasury on companies exporting to the American market from foreign factories.

“Your prerogative,” he said, with a smile that is not moved to a sponsor film. And then for one of his family, the president of the Bank of America, Brian Moynihan, who was the subject of a remarkable public denunciation, accusing the credit giant of “debancarizing” many of his conservative supporters.

He clumsily mumbled that he would sponsor the World Cup.

During this first week of his second term, most people in Davos agreed, not yet knowing what else to do.

Two worlds collide, while President “America First” is teleported as an interplanetary emperor of 30 feet, with a beating heart of the international economic order based on rules.

It is one thing to suggest that trade deficits are a problem for your national electorate. IIt is another to suggest during an internationalist forum that an ally of the G7, CanadaBecome a state of your nation, arousing dressings in the public, not only among Canadians.

The address was, by its design, charming and offensive. There was carrot and stick for the rest of the world.

While the delegates absorbed the mixture of threats, invitations and, sometimes, praise, many seemed to try to decide to what extent Trump could harm the global trade system, while evaluating the advance of his America in this boom of Technology focusing.

Davos has been the alternative pole of Trump’s second term for this first week.

There was consistency in its program consisting in using all means to Lower energy prices, especially by putting pressure on the Saudis on petroleum.

According to him, this would not only help reduce inflation, but also to drain Russia’s war chests in oil dollars to help put an end to the war in Ukraine, by economic means. The ceasefire in the Middle East has already earned Trump a certain geopolitical credibility in these circles.

Christine Lagarde, David Miliband and John Kerry entered the room by dragging her feet. Various banking leaders gathered on stage to congratulate and then slightly question the president.

The essential was as follows: is President Trump serious in the face of what is like campaign threats against the world economic system? The answer will have repercussions over the next four years and beyond.

The answer seemed to be yes, without a doubt. However, this does not mean that it will work.

Some large American CEOs told me that they were preparing for retaliation prices were applied to their exports. Their hypothesis was that the love of the president for an increased scholarship would restrict his deployment of customs duties.

But no one really knows. Anyway, there is a lot to win. He has already retired from the World Health Organization.

In walks, it was whispered that its allies from the 2025 project also suggested the withdrawal of the United States from the IMF and the World Bank.

The rest of the world actually has a certain counter-power, once it decides to get up after Trump’s whirlwind.

Canadians are now informed of their retaliatory prices. During conversations with the British Secretary of State for Affairs and the European Minister of Commerce, Jonathan Reynolds And Maros Sefcovic, Head of Commerce of the European UnionI detected a desire for peaceful dialogue.

Both advance similar arguments to try to dissuade Trump from imposing higher customs tariffs.

Mr. Reynolds told me that, as the United States has no trade deficit with the United Kingdom, it is not necessary to impose customs duties.

Sefcovic said the United States should also be seriously thinking about its excess of services.

But do they not consider the threats against the allies of G7 and NATO, Canada and Denmark (about Greenland), as downright unacceptable and as absurd as France claiming Louisiana? Sefcovic did not want to invent anything.

Diplomats draw up lists of American products that Europe can now buy to demonstrate the “victories” of President Trump, from gas weapons to the magnets of wind turbines.

It might be logical that the rest of the G7 is working in unison on reprisals against customs prices, in order to concentrate the minds of the Congress and competing factions within the Trump Court.

There is no sign that it happens.

The history of American technological supremacy embodied by the broligarchy – iOf which the founder of Amazon Jeff Bezos, the boss of Meta Mark Zuckerberg, the leader of Apple Tim Cook and the leader of Google Sundar Pichar – had the first places during the inauguration this week.

While the United States is one step ahead of Europe, its position against China is more uncertain.

One of the subjects covered in Davos was the very efficient and much cheaper AI model of Deepseek, made in China. The prediction that the brothers of technology would tear each other away before the Trump court began to come up in a few hours, rather than in a few months.

Meanwhile, even if most, but not all, here in Davos seemed rather seduced by the technological optimism of Trump, some in Europe also see it as a unique opportunity to attract high-level researchers who may not be not at all seduced by orientation. American policy. This was openly suggested by the president of the European Central Bank, Christine Lagarde.

Others have looked for comfort in the fact that Europe no longer has to face the massive green subsidies of Biden, thus creating more equitable rules for Europe.

President Trump changes the terms of world trade. The response of the rest of the world to this situation is as important as what the Trump administration decides itself.