This time last year Donald Trump was beamed into Davos from Washington to deliver a virtual address that put business and political leaders on notice; the free-trading, liberal economic model, reaffirmed and celebrated every January at the World Economic Forum, was over.
Back then, shell-shocked European leaders and central bankers emerged from the hall wondering if he was serious. Twelve months on, there can be no doubt, and the US president will be in the Alps in-person to emphatically underline the point.
President Trump will lead an 80-strong US delegation including five members of the cabinet and his most influential policy and diplomatic advisors.
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It amounts to an almighty American flex at what remains the highest-powered intersection of global business and politics, and he arrives with policy chaos flowing in his slipstream like contrails from Air Force One.
The tariffs threatened against Greenland’s Nordic and northern European allies, including the UK, are both the most serious rift in transatlantic relations in decades, and just another expression of the president’s willingness to deploy economic weapons against allies as well as adversaries.
It comes just a fortnight after the return of US gunboat diplomacy in Venezuela, where the prize is not apparently democracy but oil, with 50 million barrels as a down payment.
And all of this as economies were recalibrating following the indiscriminate ‘Liberation Day’ tariffs of last April.
What happens next, as ever, depends in large part on Trump, but Davos at least provides a platform for negotiations.
The leaders of six of the G7 nations will be in Switzerland this week – Sir Keir Starmer is the odd one out, although that could change – along with senior executives from major players in tech, banking and investment, oil and gas, and mining.
French President Emmanuel Macron will set out his position in a speech on Tuesday, as will EU President Ursula Von der Lyon. In between they will hear from Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng, one of the few who may be enjoying the spectacle of old Atlantic allies at each others’ throats.
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Trump’s presence was always going to shape this edition of the WEF’s annual meeting, although the diplomatic focus was expected to be Ukraine, and the prospect of a reconstruction deal leveraging western capital for post-war reconstruction. Volodymyrr Zelenskyy may once again have to vie for American attention.
Part conference, part trade fair, part global summit, Davos has become infamous precisely because it draws the richest and most powerful, and you don’t have to be a cynic to wonder what really goes on here.
Publicly it is largely a talking shop, with myriad panels and discussions promising thought leadership on themes that broadly support the WEF’s neo-liberal economic mission – to save the world and get rich trying (I paraphrase).
Behind the scenes it is a deal-making paradise. A measure of Davos’s role in greasing the wheels of commerce is the number of blue-chip chief executives who attend religiously every year without ever making a speech, appearing on a public panel or answering a journalist’s question.
“I can do more valuable meetings in three days in Davos than in three months at home,” says one chief executive.
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Among those hustling for a share of the action are governments eager to make the case for investment to corporations who can deliver capital, jobs and growth.
Chancellor Rachel Reeves will lead the British delegation this year, appearing on panels and scheduled to hold a round-table meeting with bosses convened by Jamie Dimon, head of JPMorgan, one of the world’s largest banks.
She will hope to get a hearing above the diplomatic noise, but this year the most valuable deals sealed in the snow may be political.
