View / Populists take Davos. Will they get bored?

As populism surged, it sometimes seemed like the only people having any fun here in Davos were the right-wing provocateurs.

While liberal politicians stayed away to avoid a toxic association with bug-eating globalist elites, anti-establishment figures relished the conflict. Javier Milei showed up in 2024 to denounce “wokeism,” while the Heritage Foundation’s Kevin Roberts bragged he’d told old elites their “time is up. That’s what I told them, right to their faces.”

This peaked last year when US President Donald Trump humiliated top finance figures.

But Davos has now jumped on the bandwagon. The progressive lingo of years past is gone. Fossil fuels are back. Companies from McKinsey to Pfizer have bought expensive branding on USA House, a private operation with the State Department’s blessing.

It turns out Trump’s brand of populism doesn’t mean he can’t enjoy a good globalist finance boondoggle. He’s bringing the largest US delegation ever, and aides are scrambling to get in.

There will, no doubt, be some denunciations of globalism.

But who are we kidding? Trump & Co. are here to do what everyone always did: schmooze, make deals, and deepen ties with Gulf monarchies, who have also arrived at Davos in force.

“It was more fun when we were the opposition,” a far-right British YouTuber, Callum Smiles, remarked to me as he staked out globalists on the Promenade.

And now the rabble-rousing populist shoe is on the other foot. California Gov. Gavin Newsom will come to Davos in something a little closer to the old populist role — with denunciations of Trump’s “crony capitalism,” and of the CEOs trying to play by the rules of the president’s new game.