(FILES) A sniper police officer uses his googles as he stands on the top of the Congress hotel during the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in the Alpine resort of Davos on Jan. 24, 2025.
All eyes will be on Donald Trump next week as politicians and business leaders head to the World Economic Forum, wondering how to square the mercurial U.S. leader with the Davos creed of open markets and multilateralism.
After a year of roiling the liberal international order since his return to office, Trump will descend on the Swiss ski resort for an address on Jan. 21, at a meeting whose theme is "A Spirit of Dialogue."
"We're pleased to welcome back President Trump," Borge Brende, the forum's chief executive, told an online press conference ahead of the Davos summit, six years after Trump's previous in-person appearance during his first term.
He will bring along the largest U.S. delegation ever, Brende added, setting the stage for private meetings on geopolitical flashpoints from Ukraine and Venezuela to Gaza, Greenland and Iran.
Trump told an event in Detroit, Michigan on Jan. 13 that he plans next week to "provide much more detail about our housing policies so that every American who wants to own a home will be able to afford one."
His message to American voters, delivered before business and political elites, comes with U.S. households feeling the squeeze from high costs of living as November's midterm elections approach.
Brende noted that "the interest is to come together at the beginning of the year to try to connect the dots, decipher, and also see areas where we can collaborate."
But with a protectionist tariff blitz and marked disdain for traditional U.S. allies defining Trump's second term, the chances of forging common strategies for the world's biggest challenges appear slim.
Brende acknowledged that "our annual meeting is taking place against the most complex geopolitical backdrop since 1945."
Economist Karen Harris at consulting firm Bain & Co. said "2025 will ultimately be seen as the year in which neoliberal globalisation ended and... the post-globalisation era began."
It's a shift in which "the U.S. prioritises national security, its own security, and uses the economy as a tool to achieve some of those goals", she said, adding that this is a "very Chinese view of the economy as well."
China is sending Vice Premier He Lifeng to Davos, while EU Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen and Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky will also attend.
Six of the Group of Seven leaders will also make appearances, only Japan will be absent.
Trump is bringing at least five key deputies including Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Brende said, alongside Steve Witkoff, his special envoy for the Middle East and Ukraine.
Addressing Davos by video last year, days after his second inauguration, Trump warned nations to shift manufacturing to the U.S. or face punishing tariffs, a direct repudiation of decades of ever-opening trade.
In his latest upending of the global order in place since World War II, Trump this month pulled the United States out of 66 international organisations including around half linked to the United Nations.
This rejection of cooperative partnerships "is precisely a broad rejection of multilateral institutions," said Philippe Dauba-Pantanacce, head of geopolitical analysis at the British bank Standard Chartered.
As a result, even if global trade manages to adapt to Trump's tariff frictions, "we may end up with a world that continues its globalisation, maybe with some adaptation and changes but... increasingly without the U.S.," Dauba-Pantanacce added.
