Reasons why Donald Trump decided to take the Davos stage - Financial Times

24/1/2018

Reasons why Donald Trump decided to take the Davos stage

The forum offers the president an extra chance to parade his self-proclaimed genius

ROULA KHALAF

Donald Trump is due to make his appearance on the last day of the World Economic Forum and some delegates are rearranging their plans to catch the president

It was supposed to be the anti-Trump week, when the liberals and globalists of the world meet in Davos to bemoan an America lost and congratulate each other on their own survival. It was fitting that the star of the World Economic Forum conference this year should be Emmanuel Macron, the liberal pro-trade, pro-Europe French president who stunted what seemed early last year like an unstoppable European populist march.

But then Donald Trump, who fancies himself the man of the people and pretends to snub the elite, decided to crash the party. Virtually all of the Trump court is decamping to the Swiss Alps, the first US president to attend the gathering in 20 years.

To the annoyance of many delegates, however, he is due to make his appearance on the last day and in the afternoon so that American television shows watch the performance. Some delegates are busy rebooking tickets and scratching plans for ski weekends in order to catch the president. Others plan to leave early.

Why does Mr Trump want to go to Davos in the first place? It is possible, but improbable, that he’s ready to acknowledge that he is, after all, part of the Davos set. That would not be news to anyone but the president: the main cheerleaders of his de-regulation and tax cuts are the rich and famous who will be in attendance.

The president is a man who believes above all in his own greatness and wants to dominate the stage left last year to China’s Xi Jinping

Perhaps the president has developed a sudden keenness for the liberal western order that he’s been busily disrupting since his election? That, too, is unlikely, given continued attachment to building a border wall with Mexico and, let us not forget, his recent alleged depictions of African and Caribbean countries as shitholes.

His own take on his trip is that he has had a stunning first year in office and wants to promote his “America first” policy to the world. He has “tremendous” things to tell about America, he said in a recent interview.

Some investors, indeed, are attracted by Mr Trump’s agenda while others will try to flatter him in Davos with promises of investment. But while he can point to a growing economy and soaring stock market, parading US leadership in front of the self-regarding elite of Davos won’t do much to improve America’s image around the world.

The latest Gallup poll conducted in 130 countries found that 30 per cent of the world, on average, approves of the performance of the US leadership, down from 48 per cent in 2016. The historic low puts the US on par with China’s approval ratings.

I suspect Mr Trump’s motivation in Davos is simpler. First, Barack Obama never went to Davos, which means it must be the right place for Mr Trump to make an appearance. Second, the president is a man who believes above all in his own greatness and wants to dominate the stage left last year to Chinese leader Xi Jinping, and this year to Mr Macron.

There is also the matter of that recently published tell-all book that cast doubt on the president’s mental health (and is guaranteed to have been read by many of those attending the WEF). Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury so unnerved Mr Trump that he tweeted he was a “very stable genius”. He’s probably hoping that at Davos, the whole world can see the genius and forget the ignorant, self-obsessed character portrayed in the book.

• Last week, Rex Tillerson, the US secretary of state accompanying the president to Davos, gave a speech on Syria at the Hoover Institution. The most intriguing part of the address had nothing to do with Syria. Mr Tillerson — a chief diplomat who does not appear to value diplomacy, having gutted the state department and left many key ambassadorial posts vacant — said that he doesn’t have a Twitter account and so doesn’t follow the president. Instead, his aides print out Mr Trump’s tweets, which he might read five minutes or an hour later.

“Now, on the one hand, you can say ‘Well, that’s nuts. Why don’t you get a [Twitter] account?’ But on the other hand, I’ve actually concluded that’s not a bad system because it goes out and I don’t know it’s going to go out so there’s not a whole lot I’m going to do until it’s out there.”

I think it is nuts and we would all sleep better at night if Mr Tillerson were to sign up to Twitter. That way, if the president ever declares war in a tweet, his secretary of state would be among the first to learn of it.