(TNND) — President Donald Trump is leaving Tuesday night for Davos, Switzerland, where he’ll address world leaders, business executives and policy experts at the annual World Economic Forum.
Organizers said 400 top political leaders and close to 850 of the world’s top CEOs will attend the meeting, which is themed “A Spirit of Dialogue” and focused on key questions around cooperation, growth, investment, innovation and prosperity.
“I think more than anything else, what I’m going to be speaking about is the tremendous success that we’ve had in one year,” Trump told reporters Tuesday about his upcoming remarks in Davos.
John Diamond, the director of the Center for Tax and Budget Policy at Rice University’s Baker Institute, said uncertainty in the global economy, geopolitical risks related to tariffs, budget deficits across the world, and the impact of artificial intelligence on energy needs and labor markets are sure to be hot topics at the forum.
But he said Trump’s increasingly forceful push to acquire Greenland from NATO ally Denmark and general geopolitical “chaos” is sure to suck up much of the oxygen in the room.
President Donald Trump takes questions from the media Jan. 20, 2026, in Washington. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
Mark Jones, a political science fellow at Rice, said Trump’s insistence on getting Greenland “the easy way” or “the hard way” is going to create tension for fellow World Economic Forum attendees.
The World Economic Forum has always been much more about talk and posturing than taking action on policy initiatives, Jones said.
And much of the talk takes place on the sidelines, which is sure to be the case as fellow attendees try and avoid saying something in public that could be interpreted as critical of Trump.
“These people view themselves often as more as global citizens, and they promote sort of a global free trade agenda, which is pretty much the antithesis of Donald Trump and the MAGA movement,” Jones said.
But he said the business and political leaders will try and ingratiate themselves to Trump, the leader of the most powerful country in the world.
Diamond said trade is one topic unlikely to fade to the background amid Trump’s push for Greenland. Trump has threatened to impose a 10% import tax on goods from eight European nations because of their opposition to American control of Greenland.
Still, despite the strains on global cooperation, Diamond said there’s still “room for a spirit of dialogue, either with the U.S. or without the U.S.” in Davos this week.
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“I only say that because the issues facing the world are so big, and they’re so immediate,” he said.
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