POWER PLAY
TRUMP, HARASSMENT FALLOUT TO DOMINATE NEXT WEEK’S GATHERING IN DAVOS.
• The World Economic Forum’s a nnual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, next week will host its usual lineup of industry titans, globe- trotting financiers and politicians of all ideological hues. The gathering is still almost certain to be dominated by just one of them: Donald J. Trump.
The most controversial American president in decades will be the first U. S. leader since Bill Clinton to attend the world’s premier economic summit, arriving on Air Force One with a big delegation in tow including Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin and National Economic Council director Gary Cohn. Embattled by persistent questions about his fitness for office, the Davos stage — where Trump will deliver a speech on the final day of the forum — provides him with an opportunity to advocate for his “America First” economic and foreign policies in front of one of the world’s most influential audiences.
“It is absolutely essential that we have President Trump with us,” because of the need to address global challenges like terrorism and environmental degradation, WEF founder Klaus Schwab said at a Tuesday press conference in Geneva. “No global industry problem or regional issue can be solved in an isolated way.”
The WEF’s organizers will be hoping Trump’s presence isn’t an undue distraction from the gathering’s other themes, chief among them the need to reckon with sexual harassment and the persistence of inequality between genders. For the first time, this year’s event will be presided over by an allfemale group of co- chairs that includes International Business Machines Corp. chief executive officer Ginni Rometty, Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg and Fabiola Gianotti, the head of the CERN centre for nuclear research.
The recent wave of harassment allegations that has roiled entertainment, politics and t he media will be a clear focus on the agenda, with at least three sessions tackling the issue. Microsoft Corp. executive Peggy Johnson and Maryam Monsef, Canada’s minister for the status of women, will headline a Jan. 23 panel on “Gender, Power, and Stemming Sexual Harassment.” A Jan. 24 session on “Shaking Up Beliefs and Behaviours about Gender” will include Carolyn Tastad, the group president for North America at Procter & Gamble Co. — one of the world’s largest advertisers.
The WEF, whose attendees naturally represent the winners of globalization, has long grappled with how to address inequality stemming f rom the 21st century’s knowledge- intensive economy.
With artificial i ntelligence and other advanced technologies threatening to make widening categories of human labour obso- lete, further polarization from the so- called fourth industrial revolution is a growing dilemma. The longterm impacts of AI will be a theme of one of the forum’s marquee one-on-one events, a Jan. 24 session in which Schwab interviews Google CEO Sundar Pichai.
Yet for all the WEF’s future- focused programming, the assembled i nvestors, businesspeople and politicians are likely to be most focused on more immediate questions of economics and geopolitics. For clues, they’ll be able to attend set- piece speeches from a wide range of world leaders.
French President Emmanuel Macron will make his pitch on transforming the second- largest economy in the euro area on Jan. 24. The next day, U. K. Prime Minister Theresa May will urge investors not to give up on Britain amid the bruising debate over the country’s exit from the European Union. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi will give one of the most closelywatched addresses on Jan. 23, when he will seek to position his country as a rival to China as the leading economic power of the emerging world.
For pure, eyeball- riveting drama, though, it will be hard to beat Trump. His speech will be one of the last major events of the week in Davos, meaning t hat everything before it will, inevitably, seem like a bit of an extended preamble. Almost no one headed to the Alps, including perhaps the president’s own staff, knows quite which leader to expect — t he pragmatic Trump with eclectic political views who appeared in flashes during his 2016 campaign, the populist firebrand who tried to ban large numbers of Muslims from entering the U. S. immediately after taking office, or something in between.
Only one thing’s for sure: to a greater extent than any year in recent memory, all eyes will be on Davos next week.
“I don’t think Davos is going to pelt Trump with rotten eggs,” said Niall Ferguson, a senior fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution.
“Certainly, t hey can’ t stand what he stands for. But he’s the most powerful man in the world, and Davos ul t i mately l oves power.”