Is globalization dead?
Attendees listen to a virtual speech delivered by U.S. President Donald Trump, at the Annual Meeting of World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Jan. 23, 2025. | Markus Schreiber / AP

Was Javier Milei right when he declared, “Davos has started to crumble”? Argentina’s libertarian president made the triumphant announcement on Jan. 23 in his speech at this year’s World Economic Forum.

In the Western world, he warned, a “hegemony of the left” has taken hold. “Wokeness,” he declared, is “a cancer that must be eradicated.” Milei vehemently insulted feminism and inclusion and railed against environmental protection and gays: “We have the moral and historical responsibility to abolish this wokeness.”

Well, a beginning has now been made. Today, Milei is no longer isolated; he no longer needs to feels “alone” in making such proclamations on the world stage, he said. He has been joined by strong like-minded people—from Donald Trump to Giorgia Meloni and Viktor Orbán to Benjamin Netanyahu. The world is changing, Milei said: “We live in a time in which the rules are being rewritten.”

Anyone who watched the World Economic Forum in the Swiss Alps last week could indeed have come to the conclusion that Milei was right in his assessment that “Davos” has begun to “crumble.” A few facts make the point.

The organizers did point out that among the approximately 3,000 guests from 130 countries around the world there were 350 government representatives, 60 of whom were heads of state or government. So, is that a sign of crumbling? Yes, indeed it is.

Because, if you looked closely, you’d have noticed that many of the figures who have always secured the big headlines at Davos were not present this year. The only head of government of a G7 state to make the trip to Davos was German Chancellor Olaf Scholz. Trump at least sent a video address, but Emmanuel Macron, Keir Starmer, and the other G7 leaders? No sign of them. Even greats from the Global South, such as China’s President Xi Jinping or India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who had repeatedly added splendor to Davos, stayed home this year.

And where the music is playing today was clear from Trump’s video address. He unequivocally called on the entrepreneurs and economic elites present to invest in the USA in the future. Anyone who does not do so, Trump announced, would be prevented by tariffs from profitably exporting their goods to the U.S. market. Governments, on the other hand, were ordered to invest 5% of their gross domestic product on their military.

The position the U.S. president was propagating was no longer the model of unrestrained neoliberal globalization that “Davos” has always stood for; it was the model of fighting against overwhelming competition from nationally isolated Western economies that are aggressively arming themselves in order to assert their dwindling global dominance militarily if necessary.

While “Davos” has always pushed policies defined by free market fundamentalism and individualism, that message is now being replaced by crude nationalism and social authoritarianism, arrayed bitterly against the supposed “woke” enemy.

How things change. It wasn’t long ago that Germany’s Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper reminded us that the Western financial elite clearly dominated Davos. Then, about ten years ago, the U.S. tech giants began to steal the show. They are still doing so today, but this year, only a few of them made the arduous journey to the Swiss Alps.

Of the “Magnificent Seven,” the seven largest U.S. tech companies, only Microsoft and its CEO were represented at the World Economic Forum. The bosses of five others—X, Meta/Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Alphabet/Google—preferred to attend the inauguration of Donald Trump, which was held at the same time.

“To find out what is moving the world, you no longer have to go to Davos,” stated Holger Schmieding, chief economist at Berenberg Bank. “You have to be there in Washington.” That’s because “the course” that matters is being set there today—in the country that dominated the world in recent decades and is now fighting its decline with all means at its disposal.

“I propose,” said Milei in Davos, “that the Western world becomes great again!” The program for this authoritarian nationalism is being driven forward not only by him, Meloni, and a few others, but also by Washington itself.

Unsere Zeit

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CONTRIBUTOR

Jörg Kronauer
Jörg Kronauer

Jörg Kronauer is a German journalist and author, focused on fascism and international politics. His writings appear regularly in Unsere Zeit, newspaper of the German Communist Party.

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