January 23, 2025
By all appearances, the World Economic Forum in Davos is a grand bazaar of the sensible, the suave, and the profoundly self-important. Here, the titans of industry and the demiurges of finance trade platitudes like so much tinsel tossed about a gilded cage. Into this sanctuary of solemn nodding and double-breasted civility, Donald J. Trump entered like a bullhorn in a confessional, trailing the faint aroma of campaign rallies past.
The crowd, a mix of bespoke suits and inscrutable accents, greeted his entrance with the polite enthusiasm of aristocrats welcoming a dancing bear. He opened, as all good circus acts do, with a flourish. A nod here, a compliment there—an olive branch before the cudgel. But soon enough, the cudgel fell. “America First,” he bellowed, a phrase as subtle as a pie to the face, and one that sent ripples of consternation through the audience.
The first gasp of dismay came with his riff on limiting “transgender surgeries,” a line so far removed from the pressing issues of global economics that it seemed parachuted in from a Nebraska town hall. A woman in a navy-blue suit rose from her seat and fled the scene, her departure silent but eloquent. Nearby, a man adjusted his cravat with the intensity of someone wishing to vanish into the ether.
When Blackstone CEO Steve Schwarzman gamely lobbed a softball about Europe, Trump swung mightily—and promptly smacked the ball into the teeth of the nearest European bureaucrat. His condemnation of EU regulations landed with all the grace of a cannonball into a fondue pot. The room froze, the air thick with the peculiar silence of men and women calculating how much decorum they could sacrifice for a sigh.
The mood brightened only when Trump joked about annexing Canada as the 51st state. Laughter broke out, though whether it stemmed from genuine amusement or sheer relief that he hadn’t declared war on Belgium is anyone’s guess.
A high point—or perhaps a nadir, depending on your vantage—came courtesy of Ana Botín, chair of Santander, who delivered her introduction with a razor-sharp jab. “You may not know me as well as the other panelists,” she began, before subtly highlighting Santander’s dominance over the likes of Bank of America and JPMorgan. The room erupted in a rare and hearty laughter, the kind that says, “Go Europe!” without anyone having to utter it aloud.
Trump responded to her as one might to a squirrel crossing a freeway: a blink, a shrug, and a determination to plow forward regardless.
When the speech concluded, the murmurs began, a chorus of bemused post-mortems. “A missed opportunity,” a journalist declared, as though expecting nuanced statecraft from Trump was akin to expecting soufflé from a waffle iron.
Yet Trump had achieved something remarkable, if not laudable. In a gathering known for its sterile diplomacy, he managed to puncture the façade, dragging the solemn gods of Davos down to earth for a moment of messy, all-too-human absurdity.
It was, in the end, less a speech than a vaudeville act—a collision of burlesque and bombast in the temple of international order. As the delegates filed out, some shaken, some chuckling, one truth emerged: Davos will forget much, but it will not soon forget the day Donald Trump took its stage and turned it into his soapbox.
Copyright © 2025 by Paul Henry Smith
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