DAVOS – Donald Trump is coming to Davos. Virtually.
The U.S. president, who was recently reinaugurated, is set to address an international audience on Thursday. This will mark his first speech after returning to the White House just three days earlier. The event will include a speech and a question-and-answer session at the annual World Economic Forum.
The fourth day of the annual World Economic Forum will also showcase other prominent figures such as Javier Milei, the bold and cost-cutting president of Argentina, and Muhammad Yunus, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate who took over as interim leader of Bangladesh following a public uprising that ousted the longtime president.
Additionally, industry experts from the business and tech sectors will have their spotlight moments. Dario Amodei from Anthropic, the creator of the artificial intelligence model Claude, as well as Yann LeCun, the chief AI scientist at Meta under Mark Zuckerberg, will be discussing the future of technology at the event.
EU chief Ursula von der Leyen will take up energy transition with the head of the International Energy Agency, Fatih Birol. A day earlier, a small group of pro-environment demonstrators staged a rally in which one placard read “Sun Baby Sun” — a retort in favor of solar power to Trump’s call for the United States to “drill, baby, drill” fossil fuels earlier this week.
Here’s a look at some of the main events Thursday in Davos:
Trump shows, just not in-person in the snows
Trump is no stranger to the gathering of CEOs, startup visionaries, government leaders, world-class academics and other elites who meet in the snowy Swiss town of Davos each January. He came twice during his first term.
His barrage of executive orders including calling for a U.S. pullout from the Paris climate deal, creating a new agency to collect tariffs and a pause in a TikTok ban have fed the chatter in the Davos Congress Center corridors.
His promotion of a business joint venture that could invest up to $500 billion in infrastructure tied to AI has drawn plaudits from tech-oriented executives in Davos, even if Trump ally and multibillionaire Elon Musk — who is not on hand — scoffed on his X social media platform that the partners “ don’t actually have the money.”
Trump also drew what might be considered muted praise from the U.N. chief.
Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, during a question-and-answer session after his speech a day earlier that focused on the threats of global warming and ungoverned AI, credited Trump’s efforts before the inauguration to help win a ceasefire in Gaza.
“The negotiations were dragging, dragging, dragging. And then, all of a sudden, it happened,” Guterres said, praising diligent efforts by Qatar and Turkey too. “I think there was a large contribution of robust diplomacy of — at the time — the president-elect of the United States.”
NATO’s Rutte urges more support for Ukraine
Anxiety in Europe has grown that Trump might seek to quickly end Russia’s war in Ukraine through talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin — on terms that might be unfavorable to Kyiv.
NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte, speaking at a breakfast on the sidelines of the forum hosted by Ukrainian tycoon Victor Pinchuk, urged Ukraine’s Western backers to keep up their support nearly three years into the war.
“If we got a bad deal, it would only mean that we will see the president of Russia high-fiving with the leaders from North Korea, Iran and China and we cannot accept that,” Rutte said. “That would be geopolitically a big, big mistake.”
Richard Grenell, Trump’s nominee as envoy for special missions, said by video from Los Angeles that Trump faced “a terrible mess” and “not a lot of great choices” in efforts to end the Russia-Ukraine war.
“President Trump is somebody who has a credible threat and has already made clear that he’s going to pressure both sides to end this. He’s focused on trying to stop the killing,” the envoy-designate said.
Putting more pressure on Putin — economic or military — remained a “legitimate option” for Trump, Grenell said.
“I would say just give President Trump a little time,” he said.
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Associated Press writer Lorne Cook in Brussels contributed to this report.
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