Dusk in wintry Davos is a lovely thing. The sun dips behind the alpine town’s mountains, and the glare of the daylight bouncing off the snow fades into a gentle sheen.

And that was how it was here, before 5.43pm in Switzerland on Jan 20, as a smiling Mr Donald Trump walked into the Capitol Rotunda in Washington to take his oath to become the United States’ 47th president. As the sky darkened, some people gathered in a tiny room at Hotel Meierhof.

There was historian Niall Ferguson, Financial Times commentator Martin Wolf, King’s College provost Gillian Tett, and Dr Manar al-Moneef, chief investment officer for Saudi Arabia’s Neom megacity project, among others. The small audience of about 25 sipped wine, and braced themselves. Over the next 80 minutes or so, fierce debate – and disagreement – ruled the room, as the thought leaders dissected the forces that brought the world to this point.

But at 6pm, Mr Ferguson stopped midstream in his elucidation and looked at his watch. It was at this point that Mr Trump was taking his oath, swearing to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States”.

Said the historian: “The monarchy of Mar-a-Lago ends now. He gets demoted from being King of Mar-a-Lago right now, to becoming the President of the United States. The fun stops here.

“Every single promise that was made on the campaign trail will – from now on, the minute he is sworn in – run into the thicket of constitutional constraints, legal constraints, and the fact that the bureaucracy is fundamentally opposed to most of what he wants to do, as it was eight years ago.”

Mr Trump’s vows to implement mass deportations and to end birthright citizenship, for instance, have already been challenged by advocacy groups on legal and constitutional grounds.

But the fun that has come to a screeching halt can be taken to refer to, of course, not just Mr Trump’s hitherto unilateral decision-making process from his private Palm Beach club, but also the pro-trade internationalist ethos of the Davos elites that had held sway for so long.

For 54 years, the global jet set of political, business, financial and thought leaders have made annual pilgrimages to this scenic town for the World Economic Forum (WEF). Here, they discuss the wicked problems of the day, from climate change to the rise of artificial intelligence (AI), and how to solve them together through multilateralism and other means, and also, really, hawk their own wares and services.

Now, as Mr Trump returns for his second tour at the White House, this time thundering about tariffs, reassessing old alliances and taking back territories that “America First” should have control over, there is a deep sense of uncertainty about where that leaves the rest of the world. But there is also a desire to look for where the opportunities might be in cutting deals with the former real estate tycoon, and to speak the language that he speaks.

Watching Mr Trump’s swearing-in from the Ukraine House in Davos – one of many shop spaces that government agencies and corporates rented here to snare attention – Mr Andrei Dligach, a delegate attending the event, told Euronews that Kyiv should market itself to the US President.

“Ukraine should sell itself to Mr Trump, to President Trump, as the new opportunity. Ukraine is the next big thing for the Western world. Not a question mark, but an opportunity in terms of security, a new economy, and adaptability,” he said.

Mr Trump has said repeatedly that he wants to end the war in Ukraine, triggering both hope – that the conflict now nearing its three-year mark could finally end – and fear – that he would force the country to surrender to Russia by cutting off military support.

Shortly after his inauguration, Mr Trump said he was prepared to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin, saying: “He should make a deal.”

Switzerland, the WEF’s host country, is similarly caught in the tangles of uncertainty. The economy of nine million people depends on trade, and the US has been its most important goods export market, buying expensive pharmaceutical products such as vaccines. What lies ahead? A Swiss journalist sighs. “Maybe we need to see how we can sell more to others. India maybe, or China.”

It appears to be sheer coincidence that the WEF kicked off on inauguration day – Jan 20 has traditionally been the day that new US presidents are sworn in, as per a 1933 ratification of a constitutional amendment.

So instead of where all the action is, Davos this year is where the watching is. “Davos becomes world’s most exclusive watch party,” goes one headline. “Billionaires and CEOs have a choice to make: Attend Trump’s inauguration or the first day of Davos”, says another.

For some, the choice was clear. TikTok CEO Chew Shou Zi’s name quietly slipped off the list of WEF participants, and he appeared instead in Washington. The same went for India’s power couple, Reliance Industries chairman Mukesh Ambani and his wife Nita, who partook in a “private candlelight dinner” with the Trumps on the eve of the inauguration. By Jan 21, their names, as well as those of their children, had also disappeared from the WEF list.

That said, others are showing up in Davos: The top brass of Tata Consultancy Services, Wipro and other tech giants of India Inc are choosing not to cede the narrative ground, amid fears of trade barriers and tightening of the H-1B visa programme that allows Indian technology workers to work in the US.

And Mr Trump himself – he attended the WEF twice as president during his first term – will address the delegates in a 45-minute virtual address on Jan 23.

Underscoring the thirst in trying to read the man now sitting in the Oval Office, the opening WEF session on Jan 20 focusing on the possible shape of his administration’s foreign policy was packed with a queue of those hoping to score a seat.

Mr Trump’s return to power has started well, with a ceasefire finally in place in Gaza, said panellist Mina Al-Oraibi, editor-in-chief of the United Arab Emirates’ The National.

Mr Trump had sent a special envoy to meet mediators in Qatar and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu earlier in January, and many believe his arm-twisting was decisive in getting the latter to agree to the pact.

“The change factor was the Trump factor”, following former US president Joe Biden’s inability to move the needle over the course of 15 months, Ms Al-Oraibi argued, adding that this crystallises what many have come to expect of Mr Trump.

That positive assessment was, however, tempered, as the panellists also noted Mr Trump’s volatility, his lame-duck status after the midterm elections, as well as the question of who his advisers are – and whether they will hang around.

On China, for instance, “Who is he listening to? Elon Musk? Who speaks last? It is constantly evolving”, said Time editor-in-chief Sam Jacobs, adding at another point that he expects Vice-President J.D. Vance to take on a bigger role in the administration’s decision-making process going forward.

And China could be the crucial glue in holding together the unconventional marriage between Mr Trump – whose support base comes from those who want him to bring jobs back to the US heartland – and seemingly “globalist” technology billionaires such as Mr Musk and Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg.

Over at the salon, Mr Ferguson pronounced: “A significant part of the tech sector has become nationalist, because they’ve understood – as the great automobile producers understood in the mid-20th century – that what is good for Meta is what is good for the United States. Tech is no longer fundamentally a globalist enterprise because AI, in particular, is part of a Cold War race between two superpowers.”

Mr Musk has also been appointed co-head of the Department of Government Efficiency, mandated to take shears to federal regulation, and across-the-board deregulation is what Mr Wolf worries about, given that “the financial sector is really, really fragile on multiple dimensions”.

To some grim laughter, he said: “So I am very optimistic… that there’ll be a huge financial crisis, which is certainly the sort of disruption that everybody is in favour of these days.”

Hanging over all of this are the broader cultural shifts under way – as those from what Dr Tett calls a “Pick-a-Mix generation”, who think they can customise everything from music to politics, ultimately find that they are nestled in digital echo chambers.

“It’s really about the illusion of agency that makes them hang on to that whatever symbol they’ve chosen even more strongly, and you end up with tribalism and echo chambers online,” she said.

Mr Trump is one such symbol.

Asia News Network/The Straits Times