Top executives have privately derided President Donald Trump at a high-powered business summit for his “wild” and “bizarre” behavior—while scrambling for face time with him.
In dispatches from the World Economic Forum in Davos, The New York Times DealBook columnist Andrew Ross Sorkin reported that the mood among chief executives toward Trump, 79, was one of “trepidation” as they fret over his escalating Greenland threats and potential trade war.
Some have even been using words like “wild” and “bizarre” to describe the president behind closed doors, even as they plan to attend a reception in his honor and joke about the safest way to flatter him in person, Dealbook reports.
The same crowd is watching nervously as the Supreme Court weighs a blockbuster challenge to Trump’s most aggressive tariffs, imposed under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977.
The justices heard arguments in November over whether Trump overstepped his authority, after lower courts damned his sweeping levies as unlawful, and could rule as early as this week.
Trying to steady nerves in Davos is Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, 63, who has been attempting to sell Trump’s agenda and soothe markets.
At a briefing at USA House—a U.S. government-branded hub dominated by a huge bald eagle mural opposite the main congress center—Bessent talked up American growth and insisted that Trump’s tariffs are part of a coherent strategy, not chaos.
He told executives, “America First does not mean America alone,” casting the slogan as a call for “deeper collaboration and mutual respect among trade partners.”
USA House has become a magnet for the executives now whispering about Trump’s volatility, Sorkin reports, while angling for a brief face-to-face with Bessent or an invite into Trump’s orbit at one of the delegation’s receptions, as they try not to be frozen out of policy decisions that could hammer their share prices.
They have reason to worry. Global markets recoiled again after Trump threatened new tariffs on European allies if they stand in the way of his plan to wrench Greenland away from Denmark. Investors are now bracing for retaliation amid talk in Brussels of deploying the European Union’s “trade bazooka”—the Anti-Coercion Instrument that could unleash tariffs on up to €93 billion (about $109 billion) of U.S. goods designed for such economic brinkmanship.
French luxury group LVMH and other European consumer giants have already seen their stock prices hit after Trump floated 200 percent tariffs on French wine and Champagne, part of a broader barrage of threats that have officials warning of a “dangerous downward spiral” in transatlantic trade.
On stage in Davos, some of the same corporate heavyweights queuing up at USA House have been striking a more sober tone about the fallout, while dealmakers who had spent last year toasting Trump’s second term now privately mull whether another trade shock could derail mergers and acquisitions.
Even the forum itself is trying to adjust, The Times reports. BlackRock boss Larry Fink, now an interim co-chair of the World Economic Forum, told delegates the gathering “can’t remain an echo chamber” and admitted the annual meeting feels “out of step with the moment” for many people. He argued that capitalism will be judged on whether it can turn more people into “owners of growth—instead of spectators watching it happen.”
USA House is such a hot ticket that scammers have cashed in by flogging bogus “VIP access” to the venue, with organizers warning that no such resale deals exist.
The Daily Beast has contacted the White House for comment.
