DAVOS: SECRETS, MONEY, POWER & POLICY

Davos in Switzerland is the scene of what’s about to be the best attended event in its history. Anyone who is really anyone will be there, including 51 heads of state or government.

The security is everywhere. You haven’t seen this many black 4×4’s in one place unless it’s the storage lot of the G-Wagon factory.

Every major Ai and IT product company has paid a fortune to erect their stands/marquees here.

Greenland is going to be a focal point. Trump is coming and expected to lay down another major policy speech, if he can stay on subject and read in his monotone from the teleprompter. Britain’s Prime Minister, Keir Starmer has just laid out in a speech Britain’s view and its approach and why all of us have to be far more aware of the geopolitical world and its impacts on us all. It was possibly the most important speech made by a British Prime Minister in a very long time, its primary target sits in the Oval Office but the others in the capitals of Europe. Starmer agreed to the speech because the others thought he would be the only one who might get through to Trump.

He laid down the core belief that only Greenland & Denmark can decide their future while playing down tariff retaliation because everyone knows where that ends and stock markets globally are all over the place right now over what can happen. They despise uncertainty. Davos is the sort of place the big corporate leaders try and get the politicians to behave reasonably because they don’t want the world disrupted, it’s bad for business, and they say what they want to their faces.

The reason it was so important wasn’t just its content, it was that it was the British Prime Minister saying an American President was wrong. Not since WW2 has a British leader stood up and said anything like this out loud to an American. Britain, because of its history and national laziness in allowing itself to become overly dependent on the US militarily, has alluded to the ‘Special Relationship’ far too often, long past the point the Americans believed in it. I was there when Hilary Clinton, then Secretary of State privately laughed at the idea and Obama was not a fan either. It’s long been over. It was something that American leaders felt they had to say to British leaders even though they didn’t see it like that at all. Now Its very clear neither side believes in it, yet both are bound up in its legacy. What Britain has not yet done is pull the King & Queen going to Washington on their state visit. Trump is known to want it to be the first in the new ballroom, pulling the visit would be a slap in the face he would not easily forget. It’s the last resort, but if he touches Greenland it will be cancelled.

To say the super rich are here would be an understatement. In the past year the world’s billionaire class added $2.5 trillion to their wealth – the equivalent of everyone else on the planet. The excessive level of that wealth is becoming an issue in and of itself.

The organisers hope that this will be a meeting based on collaboration and a willingness to share – because if the planet is to move forward in any way, rather than retreat into opposing corners, it has to find a way. There’s a mantra here that collaboration and cooperation is like water, it aways finds a way to get through.

Trump’s speech is, I suspect, about to make everyone wince. Not just in the way he delivers it, but in the way he frames America, its ‘might is right’ approach and its retraction to the American continent and Pacific. He’s apparently quite exercised over the European reactions to his Greenland language. Europe simply doesn’t understand why he thinks it matters that the US owns it when it’s already hosting a US base and had many more in the past. Nobody is unwilling to discuss mining and mineral extraction – at least they weren’t, but when Trump demands anything quite rightly, people object. There is also zero Chinese threat and Russia is in no position to attack or steal the country away. Anyone talking such garbage needs to be ignored. It’s not really even about trade routes as those pass through Canada. Some say its because if you see Mercator’s Projection on a map everything in the upper latitudes looks vastly bigger than it really is and Trump simply saw Greenland as being huge on a map.

What Trump has done is cause glee in Moscow. The Russians are ecstatic at the Trans-Atlantic divide and the speed its opening up. Kiril Dimitirev, the disingenuous hack and special envoy to the Trump Administration, has been blasting out tweets saying ‘that will give them something to talk about at Davos’. Russia has even said it is officially worried by NATO troops from Europe being sent to a European nations territory that’s in NATO to deter another NATO member from attacking its allies. You could not make this up. If I had written this as a political thriller 15 years ago everyone would have said it was the most ludicrous plot and a very bad novel.

The whole Greenland thing – essentially ignoring the people who live there – is simply not viable. Europe isn’t going to sit back and ignore this, no matter what Trump might like. Slashing trade via tariffs will do nobody any good but it does actually work both ways. As China has found, if you stand your ground, eventually Trump TACO’s. You just have to hold your nerve. The most important thing is that Europe knows this is a step too far. They know they cannot fight an American invasion should it happen, it’s a demonstration of their solidarity, not a military threat. It’s that solidarity that has so irked Trump.

The Greenland issue is being discussed in coffee shops and homes – in a way few other issues have been. In Britain and most of Europe it’s seen as absolutely wrong, unacceptable and a redline we must stand in support of. Is it Trump again, over- claiming to get Denmark to feel so pressured, that it and Greenland give in to wholesale mining and resource extraction? If America wanted more military bases that would not have been much of an issue. Now it is, simply because of the way he’s gone about it.

Even Congressional Republicans are warning him this is a step too far – not that he’ll pay any attention to them.

Growing calls to separate European NATO from America will continue to increase – as they should.

I don’t think NATO itself is in danger. It may need reform as America detaches over the longer term. What is in danger is world trade, and the dangers of geopolitical polarisation.

The old world order is dead. No more rules. Maintaining trade and finance is going to be harder as China stakes its claims to its ‘sphere’ – something its willing to concede to the US in the Americas if the same is done in the Pacific by the US. Russia is slowly imploding and Europe as a whole will have to face it must control its own, however distasteful the concept. It can only do that working together, and that means far more closely with the non-EU members than the bloc has been prepared to do so far. It’s quickly coming around. Britain is too important to trade and defence – and if the EU is to thrive redeveloping the relationship is a must, same for the UK. They have to try and make up the loss of America. Any EU or UK-US trade deal is now dead, and all the better for it in my opinion.

Davos is going to partly be about how keeping free trade happens in Trumps hapless world of tariffs he simply doesn’t understand. He still thinks that ultimately we pay the money to America. It’s beyond him that those taxes end up passing through to American consumers – they really pay. For the big corporations it’s going to be how trade continues without running up against a world of complex tariffs, whose very nature is to dampen world trade in favour of domestic products. Except if you don’t have alternate product it just means inflation and shortages.

Inevitable too, will be talk on Ukraine, both its war, its accession to the EU and the vast opportunities to rebuild it. there will be a lot of effort made by Ukraine to stop the spotlight drifting.

The Ai giants are here trying to persuade the leaderships of nations and big corporations they can men them even more money – at the expense of the working man no doubt.

Don’t make the mistake of dismissing this year’s Davos as a minor talking shop where nothing happens. It’s already started. The world may have changed by the end of the week and we need to be ready for it.

The Analyst

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