Davos founder: ‘Important to listen to the populists’ amid global fervor

DAVOS, Switzerland — At the Davos economic conference, “it’s important to listen to the populists,” said the founder of the annual gathering of movers and shakers, adding that he hopes to welcome President-elect Donald Trump “expressing his ideas” at the Swiss forum one day.

Critics often accuse the yearly World Economic Forum in the Swiss Alps of being a snow-covered playground for well-heeled business and political elites. But founder Klaus Schwab said this year’s event, which opens today before a public start tomorrow, is reaching out to populist politicians who have ridden a wave of discontent among the masses.

“It’s important to listen to the populists, and actually we have several sessions where we deal with these issues, and we have representatives of populist parties here with us,” Schwab said in an interview yesterday with The Associated Press. “We have to take it (populism) seriously.”

For a forum that strives to take the pulse of the world each year and produce “a real hub of a global discussion,” Schwab said “it would be soundly unrealistic and far from realities if we did not integrate the concerns of populists very much into our own deliberation.”

Chinese President Xi Jinping is the first Chinese head of state ever to attend the forum. As for the United States, the incoming Trump administration will be represented by adviser Anthony Scaramucci, a financier who has attended Davos in the past.