Donald Trump must answer questions asked from Davos on Thursday by some big finance and energy bosses, a highly anticipated event after the numerous decrees and threats announced since his return to the White House.
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The newly inaugurated 47th President of the United States will participate at 4 p.m. GMT (11 a.m. in Montreal), by videoconference from Washington, in the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in the upscale resort of the Swiss Alps.
In the meantime, one of his close claimed allies, the ultraliberal Argentine President Javier Milei, congratulated himself during a speech in Davos that Argentina “embraces again the idea of freedom”. “This, I believe, is what President Trump is going to do in this new America,” he added.
He praised like-minded leaders such as Donald Trump, Italian Prime Minister Georgia Meloni, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and El Salvador President Nayib Bukele: “Slowly formed an international alliance of all those nations who want to be free and who believe in the ideas of freedom.”
Javier Milei also defended his “dear friend” Elon Musk, who has become essential in recent months alongside Donald Trump and accused of having made a Nazi salute during a recent meeting in Washington. The world’s richest man has denied that was his intention.
He “was unfairly vilified by wokism in the last hours for an innocent gesture, which only means (…) his gratitude to the people,” assured Javier Milei.
Far from the values of openness defended for decades by the WEF, he denounced the “mental virus of woke ideology”. “It is the great epidemic of our time, which must be treated. It is the cancer that must be eradicated,” he insisted.
Davos ‘frozen in uncertainty’
Javier Milei had already welcomed Wednesday in Davos “the golden age” that Donald Trump promises for the United States, “a light for the whole world”.
-The elites gathered this week in Davos await with a mixture of enthusiasm and concern the intervention of the new leader of the world’s leading power,
The champion of “America First” threatens his major trading partners with increases in customs duties and increased protectionism – Here again we are far from the multilateralism and free trade of which the World Economic Forum is the herald .
Threats of surcharges against Mexico, Canada, the European Union or China, withdrawal from the World Health Organization or the Paris climate agreement, stated desire to “take back” the Panama Canal.. Donald Trump has given a foretaste of his intentions since his inauguration on Monday, which coincided with the opening of the Davos Forum.
“Even if customs taxes are announced, please keep calm,” the director general of the World Trade Organization, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, pleaded in Davos on Thursday. And to warn that “returning blow after blow” would be “catastrophic” for global growth: “Everyone will pay. Everyone. and poor countries will pay the most.”
“Frozen in uncertainty”
Karen Harris, economist at Bain, describes to AFP a somewhat unusual atmosphere this year in the Swiss resort, where everyone seems “frozen in uncertainty”.
“Trump loves to provoke, and a lot of people in Davos are bored with their lives. It’s not boring. So you know, it’s quite exciting,” Graham Allison, a professor at the American University of Harvard and a regular at the Davos meeting, told AFP.
The American president’s intervention is expected to last 45 minutes, and includes a question-and-answer session with big bosses, according to the program established by the World Economic Forum, organizer of the meeting in the Swiss Alps resort.
The Frenchman Patrick Pouyanné, CEO of the oil giant TotalEnergies, will be one of them, alongside Ana Botín, president of the Spanish banking group Banco Santander, Stephen Schwarzman, CEO of the American investment fund Blackstone, and Brian Moynihan, CEO of Bank of America.
Donald Trump, himself a billionaire businessman, runs America like it’s a business and wants “the best benefit for the United States, however he can get it done,” says Julie Teigland , partner of the EY firm. “He knows he needs business partners to do this. So I expect him to send messages along these lines.”
