Wednesday, January 24, 2018

Trump in Davos

By the terms of the mindless media narrative, President Trump should not be going to Davos, Switzerland. Being an America firster he will certainly not be welcomed by the cabal of globalists. They all loved Barack Obama and despise the anti-globalist Trump.

To offer a bit of perspective on it all, Niall Ferguson has written an op-ed explaining why Trump will be very welcome in Davos, thank you. And he also explains why Obama never went there.

According to Ferguson, the global elites secretly have a crush on Trump. Who knew?

The real issue is the message Trump chooses to communicate to a global business elite that has an embarrassing little secret they would rather not say too much about: They may hate his tweets and his politically incorrect rhetoric, but they have spent the past year loving his economic policy to bits. Deregulation plus corporate tax cuts have helped to drive the price of nearly every stock represented at Davos to record highs. Forget the public handshakes; it’s the private high-fives that will matter. As I prophesied two years ago: Trump was always going to come to Davos if he was elected president, in order to remind his fellow billionaires that, when all is said and done, he is really one of them.

The reason Obama never went to Davos is that, aside from raising campaign funds from them, he had little real use for businessmen. Trump, by contrast, is a businessman, whose network of business ties — not least to Russia — remains a focal point of an investigation that may yet determine the fate of his presidency.

What is the meaning of Davos? Ferguson answers:

One of my favorite lines about Davos comes from JP Morgan boss Jamie Dimon: “Davos is where billionaires tell millionaires how the middle class feels.” The events of 2016 revealed that Trump knew a lot more than most members of his class about how the American middle — and working — class felt. For that reason, if no other, he can expect more than a cold shoulder from the globalists this week.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I read a lengthy New Yorker piece on Davos.

It's hierarchical. Only ultra VIPs are admitted to the important conclaves. -- Rich Lara