Trump Is Helping To Make Elites Great Again

(Bloomberg View) -- There is no contradiction between President Donald Trump's decision this year to visit the World Economic Forum in Davos -- that ultimate congregation of elites -- and his populist politics. Rather, everything Trump has done so far promotes a slogan JPMorgan Chase Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon coined half-facetiously at last year's Davos: "Make elites great again!" (#MEGA).

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin defended Trump's trip by saying he didn't think Davos was "a hangout for globalists." He needn't have bothered: Davos is a hangout for everybody who's anybody. Even the Russian communists didn't mind when their leader, Gennady Zyuganov, came in 1996 when it appeared he was about to beat Boris Yeltsin for the presidency. Davos is a stage on which any message, including an anti-globalist one, can reach the right ears. Not going simply means that someone else gets to deliver his message instead. Last year, when Trump didn't go, Chinese President Xi Jinping stole the show when he made the case for free trade, which Trump would have countered.

This time around, Trump, according to Mnuchin, intends to lay out his "America First" policies and argue that if they're good for the U.S., they're good for the rest of the world, too. That in itself will be a concession to the forum's significance, which promises to set up something of a showdown. French President Emmanuel Macron and possibly also German Chancellor Angela Merkel will be there to present an alternative European vision. 

In a way, however, Trump casts less of a shadow over year's World Economic Forum than he did at the 2017 one.

A year ago, he embodied the populist threat hanging over Europe and the U.S. His inauguration speech, with its harsh nationalist message -- "From this moment on, it's going to be America first" -- resonated around the world on the last day of the Davos forum, held under the slogan "responsive and responsible leadership." In that speech, Trump advertised his way of making U.S. leadership responsive to the grievances of the victims of what he termed "American carnage." Wealthy investors and experts at Davos voiced fear of the revolution he appeared to symbolize. "I want to be loud and clear: Populism scares me," billionaire hedge fund manager Ray Dalio told a panel. "The No. 1 issue economically as a market participant is how populism manifests itself over the next year or two." 

Now Dalio has his answer. In the U.S., Trump has achieved little of lasting significance -- and nothing as a populist. The only important piece of legislation he has signed has a been a tax reform that benefits the wealthiest Americans, not a populist measure by any standard. Steve Bannon, the ideologist who helped push Trump into the unlikely role of working-class advocate -- and who wrote the inaugural address -- is out of the Trump administration and the target of some of the president's most vicious tweets: "Sloppy Steve," Trump labeled him memorably. Trump has failed to start building a border wall. Undocumented immigrant detentions on the U.S. southwestern border dropped by more than a quarter in 2017 compared with the previous year -- perhaps because fewer immigrants are coming, but still a clear sign that no massive Trump crackdown is underway. Jobs creation slowed down slightly. The international image of the U.S. has taken a hit. 

Trump's presence this year is the ideal backdrop for leaders such as Macron and Merkel. Not only did they win elections in 2017, thwarting populist challenges -- they've actually achieved something since doing so.

Macron, in his first months as president, worked effectively with labor unions and the employers' lobby to push through a business-friendly reform of France's convoluted labor code, and has moved toward fixing the professional education and pension systems.

Merkel, who was forced by the September election results to engage in complex coalition-building, has just struck a deal with the German Social Democrats that will likely allow her to form a stable government. If that doesn't sound like much of an achievement, consider the 28-page preliminary coalition agreement, which spells out specific policies the two parties will get through parliament in the next four years and even lays down spending numbers on particular measures -- a level of detail, and of government predictability, that Americans can only envy.

Compared with erratic, beleaguered Trump, with his uncertain grasp of specifics and dubious role in steering the U.S., Macron and Merkel are paragons of skill, confidence and responsibility. They don't even have to say anything to drive home their message of centrism and competence. 

Trump doesn't come to Davos as a fearsome figure. He comes as a symbol of failure and a living reason why the policy and business elite he campaigned against doesn't deserve the guillotine. #MEGA indeed.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Leonid Bershidsky is a Bloomberg View columnist. He was the founding editor of the Russian business daily Vedomosti and founded the opinion website Slon.ru.

To contact the author of this story: Leonid Bershidsky at lbershidsky@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Therese Raphael at traphael4@bloomberg.net.

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