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Davos Predicts Trump Re-Election. Biden Should Start Celebrating

Saturday, January 20, 2024 at 7:58 PM
Written by Anthony L. Hall

The World Economic Forum at Davos is where the rich go to blow smoke about climate change and poverty to cover up wheeling and dealing to make themselves even richer.The World Economic Forum at Davos

The annual gathering of business and political elites at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland, concluded yesterday. However, this event often reeks of hypocrisy, so much so that forum discussions do little more than emit the CO2 attendees continually pledge to reduce.

Especially notable are their backslapping pledges to combat climate change and end poverty. They make quite a show of making these pledges at public forums. But those forums are only window dressing for private schmooze fests, where attendees strike deals to make the rich even richer.

I have denounced their gatherings in many commentaries, including

The key takeaway from this WEF? Davos is irrelevant!

Nothing demonstrates how irrelevant this forum is quite like its annual forecasts. Because those forecasts often turn out to be wrong. Case in point, the WEF chief economists’ forecast for 2023 portended such doom that Reuters began its report on last year’s forum as follows:

The prospect of imminent global recession cast a long shadow over Davos on Monday as participants gathering for the opening of the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting counted the likely cost for their economies and businesses.  

(January 17, 2023)

Except that the US led the world’s leading economies in making a mockery of that glooming forecast. The prestigious Atlantic Council summed up the year on December 20, 2023, as follows:

At the beginning of this year, many economists predicted a mild recession in the United States, a deeper one in Europe, and a robust rebound in China. What a difference a year makes. There was no recession in the United States, Europe managed the situation better than anticipated, and China is struggling to regain its footing.

Dimon leads Davos in predicting Trump’s re-election

Here is how The New York Times reported yesterday on this year’s WEF forecast:

A Consensus Emerges at Davos: Trump Will Win Re-Election. In private, many business and political leaders at the World Economic Forum say they expect Donald Trump to return to the White House.

Logo of World Economic Forum with images of protests and Jamie Dimon at Davos

But, given their track record, you’d be forgiven for taking this WEF consensus with a grain of salt. Frankly, it reflects more wishful thinking than political forecasting.

JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon on Wednesday [at Davos] praised former President Donald Trump’s record and admonished Democrats to be ‘more respectful ‘… when they talk about MAGA. ‘Take a step back, be honest. He was kind of right about NATO, kind of right on immigration. He grew the economy quite well. Trade tax reform worked. He was right about some of China.

(CNBC, January 17, 2024)

If you didn’t know better, you’d think Dimon was one of Trump’s chief PR flaks, you know, like one of those who masquerade these days as Republican members of Congress. After all, to expose Dimon’s fatuous spin, the CNBC reporter only had to ask the following questions:

  1. Mr. Dimon, you want Democrats to be respectful “when they talk about MAGA.” And Trump and his supporters keep pledging to Make America Great Again. When exactly was America great for the Democrats you’re admonishing?
  2. NATO has been indispensable in preserving and protecting democratic freedoms worldwide for the past 75 years. So, do you really think Trump’s policy of undermining and threatening to disband NATO was “right”?
  3. Trump predicated his immigration policy on banning Black and Latino immigrants while admitting White ones. He even separated babies from their mothers in a cruel effort to deter Latino migration. What do you think was right about that?
  4. Finally, Biden’s economic policies have made fools of the best economists at this forum. So, do you really want to tout Trump’s economic policies, which featured tax cuts for rich people like you and richer corporations like yours?

The obvious answers to those questions would’ve made a fool of Dimon himself. Which raises this question:

  • Why are the elites at Davos predicting a Trump re-election, especially given his declared intent to serve as America’s first dictator?

It seems business elites are joining media elites in doing their damnedest to make Trump’s re-election a self-fulfilling prophecy. Because corporate titans like Dimon fully expect to thrive as oligarchs under a Trump dictatorship.

No doubt these Davos elites have in mind the way oligarchs have thrived for decades under Putin’s – democracy and the general welfare be damned. Hence, my prescient criticism about Trump being a perfect Davos pitchman.