‘The theme of this year’s Davos should be ‘choose your daddy’,” says one of the organisers of USA House, where tech evangelism and posters for a forthcoming film about Melania Trump collide just off the promenade.
He was responding to feisty speeches by presidents Emmanuel Macron of France and Canada’s Mark Carney, who’ve made the case for “middle powers”, such as their countries, to form alliances to stand up to the big powers now that the rules-based international order appears to be over.
“I love how they are pledging to be subservient to China to combat being subservient to the USA,” this person says.
Yes, but does he know that USA House is actually in the Englischer Kirche, built by and for the Church of England?
Early birds
Even before Trump’s delayed arrival on Wednesday, leaders of the official US delegation seemed determined to rub European faces in America’s current economic and political superiority.
“Not so funny now, that old joke about how, having been late to the first two world wars, America is determined to be early to the next one,” observes a former European minister, downing a glass at yet another crowded party in the Belvédère Hotel.
Putin nostalgia
Related articles:
The heavy security presence, including a rumoured Congress Centre lock-in and an expected suspension of the mobile phone network during Trump’s speech – apparently to prevent drone attacks (by irate Greenlanders?) – has had Davos regulars reminiscing fondly about the good old days when Vladimir Putin merely marched around town with an entourage of heavies who shoved aside any chief executive or banker who dared to get in his way.
Situations vacant
Newsletters
Choose the newsletters you want to receive
View more
For information about how The Observer protects your data, read our Privacy Policy
The leaders of corporate America are here en masse, almost as triumphalist as their political counterparts as they brag about the faster GDP growth they are enjoying and promote the artificial intelligence revolution – though a few US CEOs have mumbled apologetically that their large language models are now so good that this will be the year when the long-predicted AI jobs apocalypse truly begins.
Jamie’s roasts
Many big US companies have paid a fortune to rent local restaurants and clothes shops, which they turn into branded “houses” where they hold private events and parties. (So far, an invite to Palantir’s bash has been the most sought after.)
Intriguingly, Nvidia, the world’s sometimes most valuable company, is not one of them – though its boss, Jensen Huang, is here with, by the standards of his peers, a tiny team of colleagues.
Most CEOs, like last year, remain in suck-up-to-the-president mode. One complains that among them only Jamie Dimon is free to criticise Trump, because the bank he runs, “JP Morgan is untouchable”.
Becks to the future
Celebrities, who often flock to Davos, are relatively thin on the ground this year. The world falling apart is not really a good look, though it may explain the presence of transatlantic relationship breakdown expert David Beckham, who has had to field questions about his family feud.
Perhaps he should have brought along Brooklyn and his billionaire's daughter wife, who would have loved the fabulous parties and programming for the “next gen” children of the super rich.
Fur babies
The lack of a proper Russian presence this year means there are no plane loads of “translators” from Moscow. Again America is helpfully filling the void. In the long queue for passes to the hotels where most of the parties happen, a group of fur-clad LA women were overheard loudly discussing their Only Fans pages and hopes of finding a billionaire husband.
Photograph: Theresa Munch/dpa/Alamy