Publications /
Opinion

Back
The Tribe of Davos Globalists Feels the Downturn of Globalization
Authors
January 23, 2024

The annual World Economic Forum took place in Davos, Switzerland, from January 15-19. Every year for 54 years, a global business elite has traveled there, whether to interact with customers and suppliers, with intellectual leaders on broad topics or, in an informal environment, with the representatives of governments and multilateral authorities who attend.

Nothing is deliberated, of course, but over time the forum has established a reputation as a stage from which announcements are made and better cross-knowledge of the opinions of key people on hot topics can be obtained.

I personally had the opportunity to see this at the forum in January 2003, when I was a member of the Brazilian government delegation. At that moment, there was enormous and widespread interest in knowing what the first Lula government would be like. Rarely in my life have I seen such a large group of world-renowned economists sitting in a room to listen to the then-newly appointed Minister of Finance, Antônio Palocci, and President of the Central Bank, Henrique Meirelles, talk about their policy plans. Lula also received a huge spotlight at the event. The forum clearly served to satisfy this type of curiosity.

Xi Jinping, president of China, for example, knew how to use Davos well to defend globalization and free trade in 2017. China managed to climb the per-capita income ladder by taking advantage of globalization and, at that moment, it began to have to deal with the anti-Chinese attitude taken by the then Trump Administration. There could not be a better stage for delivering his message.

This year the official motto was ‘rebuilding trust’. It is no coincidence that geopolitical risks dominated discussions, from the wars in Gaza and Ukraine, to the possible consequences of Trump’s return to the White House after this year’s American elections. This was despite some kind of optimism that could have been generated by the favorable surprises in the global economy in 2023, after the predictions made at last year’s forum, when the dominant view—later contradicted—was that the global economy would go through strong deceleration. The need for more ‘trust’ and cooperation to mitigate global risks was the motto.

In January 2003, there was also the shadow of geopolitics. The possibility of an invasion of Iraq—which happened two months after the event—was the subject of discussions. The memory of September 11, 2001, was also fresh enough to appear in discussions. But the fact is that the predominance of the economic globalization agenda was then crystal clear.

Not this year. The 2024 Global Risks Report proposed by the Forum highlighted 10 main risks for the next 10 years. Five of these refer to environmental issues:

1- Extreme weather events;

2- Critical change in Earth systems;

3- Loss of biodiversity and ecosystem collapse;

4- Scarcity of natural resources; and

5- Pollution.

 

The report remarks that such environmental risks can exceed points of no return (‘tipping points’). In addition, the report highlights growing political polarization, technological risks with artificial intelligence evolving beyond the reach of regulatory controls, and new security risks accompanying the rise in geopolitical tensions. These themes predominated, at least judging by the open online sessions that I attended.

The Davos Forum is a giant in-person networking opportunity. The ebb during the pandemic hasn’t changed that. But something seems to have changed regarding what political scientist Samuel Huntington described in 2004 as a tribe, a global elite with “little need for national loyalty, [...] seeing national borders as obstacles that are fortunately disappearing and national governments as residues of the past. In other words, he described men – and – women of Davos as a tribe of “globalists”.

The Davos Forum is so identified with the expansion and strengthening of globalization in the decades in which it flourished, that it could not emerge unscathed from globalization’s partial retrenchment in recent times. Fears about deglobalization must have been predominant.

It is still paradoxical that, in addition to the smaller presence of globally significant public authorities compared to previous forums, the event had a speech by the new president of Argentina, Javier Milei, in which he warned the men and women of Davos about the risks of being captured by a worldview that “leads to socialism and, consequently, poverty”. Milei sounded how many far-right people have characterized … the ‘globalists’, like the people who attend the World Economic Forum at Davos. It must have been odd for Davos globalists to receive such a message.

RELATED CONTENT

  • July 24, 2025
    This episode explores the potential of debt-for-climate swaps as a strategic tool to address climate challenges and fiscal constraints in developing countries. While implementation has often been slow and fragmented, the conversation examines practical experiences from regions like Lati...
  • Authors
    Bruno Saraiva
    July 21, 2025
    This article assesses the economic performance of the original BRICS economies, relative to the growth and currency appreciation projections presented in the papers that introduced the acronym, prior to the grouping becoming a diplomatic, political, and economic reality. It also discusses the BRICS agenda in the current challenging geopolitical context, in which economic fragmentation tends to raise costs for the global economy and presents considerable obstacles for emerging and de ...
  • Authors
    Bruno Saraiva
    July 14, 2025
    The BRICS+ group of countries met in Rio de Janeiro over the weekend of 6-7 July. The original group – Brazil, Russia, India, China and, soon after, South Africa – emerged as the materialization of a work of fiction. Jim O’Neill, then chief economist at Goldman Sachs, produced a report in 2001 drawing attention to the rise of these countries as emerging regional powers in global economic growth. ...
  • Authors
    Edited by
    July 14, 2025
    Available soon on livremoi. The 2025 edition of the African Economic Report continues in the spirit of previous versions. It presents a broad overview of the continent’s economic evolution and offers insights into Africa’s relationship with the rest of the world. In other words, it explores how Africa navigates the effects of global fragmentation within its regional spaces while pursuing its ambition of continental integration. ...
  • July 11, 2025
    In this episode, we discuss whether Africa’s sub-regions foster unity or deepen divides, examine how they handle political crises, and consider the impact of global powers on regional dynamics. We explore what’s needed for stronger cooperation and how Africa can preserve its diversity w...
  • July 9, 2025
    Developing countries have few options to deal with the ongoing tariff war amid unpredictable shifts in global supply chains. However, regional economic integration offers a strategic path of development in these uncertain and challenging times. Helped by geographical proximity and cultural familiarity, countries in a region can benefit greatly from promoting trade with one another, reaping the benefits of comparative advantages and economies of scale—if they are able to establish a ...
  • July 8, 2025
    حلقة اليوم من برنامج حديث الثلاثاء تناقش اتفاقية التبادل الحر بين المغرب وتركيا، التي وُقعت عام 2004 ودخلت حيز التنفيذ سنة 2006 بهدف تعزيز التجارة الثنائية. رغم ارتفاع حجم المبادلات، سجل الميزان التجاري عجزاً متزايداً لصالح تركيا تجاوز 3 مليارات دولار سنة 2024، رغم تعديل الاتفاقية سنة 2...