Trump attended this year’s gathering in the Swiss Alps with a large delegation, and his Cabinet members used the forum to promote his policies.
WASHINGTON—The World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland, long known for supporting globalism, environmental sustainability, and social equity, struck a markedly different tone this year with President Donald Trump’s return to the global stage.
Topics that used to be central at the WEF’s annual meeting appeared to be sidelined, replaced by more urgent issues such as trans-Atlantic tensions over Greenland, tariff disputes, and growing unilateralism.
This year, Klaus Schwab did not attend for the first time since he founded the WEF in 1971. With Schwab’s absence came a noticeable decline in focus on the forum’s usual themes, such as multilateral cooperation on net-zero transitions and initiatives such as environmental, social, and governance policies and diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Swedish activist Greta Thunberg was also absent from this year’s gathering in the Alpine village. In some prior years, she had been one of Davos’s visible figures, delivering lines such as “our house is on fire” in speeches and calling for an immediate turn away from fossil fuels.
This year, the forum welcomed Elon Musk as a new guest. The Tesla and SpaceX founder attended Davos for the first time after years of publicly criticizing the WEF as “boring” and calling its participants an “unelected world government.” He joined Larry Fink, CEO of BlackRock and WEF interim cochair, on stage to discuss how technological progress will create an “abundance of goods and services” for humanity and expressed optimism about the future.
Observers also noted a significant decline in climate discussions at Davos. The 2026 official program featured only four sessions referencing “climate change,” down from 16 in 2022. In speeches by world leaders—including French President Emmanuel Macron and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney—terms such as “climate change” and “net zero” were absent.
U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright, a fossil fuel industry veteran, attended the WEF for the first time and spoke at a session called “Conversation on How to Fuel Our Lives,” where he argued that the world requires significantly more oil, natural gas, coal, and nuclear energy.
By Emel Akan
