Interesting analysis from the New Yorker

Sorry I can only do a cut and paste - doubt most have a subscription.


Why Donald Trump Will Be Welcome in Davos

By John Cassidy7:16 P.M.

Far from being a vehement opponent of the globalization that is celebrated at Davos, President Trump is one of its beneficiaries and practitioners.Photograph by Yuri Gripas / Reuters
President Trump is off to Davos, Switzerland, to attend the annual World Economic Forum. Some commentators are billing the trip as a great showdown between the Make America Great Again populist firebrand and the globalist plutocrats who make up much of the Davos crowd. “Mr Trump, political agent provocateur, scourge of the global elite, blunt-speaking polite-society-gate-crasher, tribune of the deplorables, will indeed ascend the famous Swiss mountain and address well-heeled, bien-pensant, self-appointed leaders of the globalist establishment—right in the inner sanctum of their most sacred temple,” Gerard Baker, the editor-in-chief of the Wall Street Journal, wrote in a special Davos-themed section of the paper.
This framing is dramatic but a bit misleading. Far from being a vehement opponent of the globalization that Davos symbolizes, Trump is one of its beneficiaries and practitioners. As evidenced by the presence of a Trump Tower in Manila and a Trump International Golf Club in Dubai, he is a global brand. A considerable part of his real-estate business depends on rich foreign buyers at his U.S. condominium developments, who also helped him narrowly salvage his company during the 2009 financial crisis. And he has just signed into law a huge tax break for the same U.S.-based multinational corporations that help finance the World Economic Forum, from Google to Goldman Sachs.
To be sure, Trump rose to the Presidency partly because of his willingness to champion, at least verbally, the victims of globalization in the Rust Belt states and elsewhere. The protectionist moves he has made since entering the Oval Office, including, most recently, slapping hefty tariffs on imported solar panels and washing machines, don’t sit well with most Davos attendees, either. But, considered over all, the Trump Administration’s actions on trade have been less incendiary than its rhetoric, and those actions have to be considered in the context of the popular backlash against what Klaus Schwab, the Swiss academic who founded the World Economic Forum, refers to as the “phase of hyperglobalization.”
Schwab and his Davos regulars are all too aware of the common perception that globalization has failed a lot of ordinary people. Indeed, they don’t necessarily deny this failure, and they are worried about its political implications. “Now what we see is that the people who have been left out, and who have suffered more from globalization and not profited from it, start to have thoughts of rebellion,” Schwab told Baker, in an interview. “We should also not forget that globalization has brought many benefits. We have to find the right balance between globalization and making sure that we maintain the social contract.”
Trump is the U.S. figurehead of the rebellion against globalization, but, to the intense relief of many Davos types, his is a Janus head, with two faces. Yes, he occasionally calls out individual C.E.O.s for moving their factories abroad. He also rails against the Word Trade Organization, which is supposed to police global commerce, for failing to crack down on Chinese copyright infringements and other abuses. But that is only one side of the story. The Trump Administration—with its tax cuts for corporations and the rich, its eagerness to strip away regulations in many sectors of the economy, and its aura of crony capitalism—is basically a plutocratic government in a populist overcoat. (And, now that Steve Bannon has been banished from Trump world, the overcoat is looking threadbare.)
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Maintaining open markets isn’t the only thing corporate chiefs care about. What concerns them most is having a strong economy for their company’s products and maintaining an aggressively pro-business legal and regulatory environment. In Davos this week, they will happily sit through panel sessions on climate change and making globalization more inclusive. But, as Branko Milanović, a leading expert on global inequality who teaches at the cuny Graduate Center, has noted, “Only in passing, and probably on the margins of the official program, will they get into the tremendous monopoly and monopsony power of their companies, ability to play one jurisdiction against another in order to avoid taxes, how to ban organized labor in their companies, how to use government ambulance services to carry workers who have fainted from extra heat (to save expense of air conditioning). They are loath to pay a living wage, but they will fund a philharmonic orchestra.”
No matter how many hard-pressed working-class voters gave their support to Trump in 2016, he clearly has no intention of impinging on corporations’ privileges. And, thus far, his residency at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue has been accompanied by a buoyant domestic and global economy. At least some of the Davos attendees are bound to feel grateful. “It is hard to actually overstate how different it is when you meet with somebody and they ask, what is the one regulation we can change to make your business grow more quickly?” Roger Crandall, the boss of MassMutual, told the Wall Street Journal. Sir Martin Sorrell, the chief executive of the global advertising group WPP, said, “There is extreme optimism. It is remarkable the psychological difference—whatever you think of Trump—that he has brought.”

Judging by these comments, it seems likely that the American President will receive a surprisingly warm welcome when he lands in Switzerland. When he speaks on Friday, Trump may offend some sensibilities with his talk about putting America first and challenging other countries’ unfair trade practices. But don’t expect a great confrontation in the Alps.

John Cassidy has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 1995. He also writes a column about politics, economics, and more for