Davos

1. In the shadow of Trump
2. What’s on today
3. In the news
4. Team USA in town
5. Davos permits
6. Room rates
7. McKinsey’s nightcap
8. Texting with Klaus
9. Reading list

Also: Today in Trump.

Welcome to Davos day one.

We hope you’re cramming it all into a frontloaded World Economic Forum this year. Do send us tips, impressions, and feedback to davos@semafor.com.

And spread the word — forward this to someone who needs to stay in the loop on all things Davos.

Semafor’s Ben Smith, Liz Hoffman, Reed Albergotti, Yinka Adegoke, and Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson are in town for the week and will be reporting and hosting events through Friday.

First Word

CEOs began arriving here in Davos today with one eye on the Sanada stage and the other on Washington. Some executives, like TikTok’s Shou Zi Chew, dropped off the WEF’s guest list just as they appeared on the one for Trump’s swearing-in ceremony. Some inauguration attendees, like Walmart’s Doug McMillon, are skipping Davos. Others, like Pfizer’s Albert Bourla and Uber’s Dara Khosrowshahi, will fly from one to the other.

The DC ceremonies clash with a WEF event hailing the likes of designer Diane von Furstenberg for their contributions to “a more inclusive, empathetic and sustainable future.” Trump’s rhetoric jars with Davos definitions of inclusion, empathy and sustainability but he looms over the annual meeting long before he is due to address it remotely on Thursday.

After the market’s heady response to Trump’s victory, pre-Davos surveys highlight concerns, with intensifying trade wars topping CEOs’ worry lists. Few economists expect global economic conditions to improve in 2025. Here again, the US is pivotal: wealthy US consumers who have been “the lynchpin” of the global recovery are tightening their belts, noted Karen Harris, managing director of Bain & Company’s macro trends group: “That makes us nervous.”

Yet the 1,600 business leaders in Davos also express optimism that they can boost profits through AI-powered innovation and that some Trump campaign pledges will not become policy.

“Are tariffs going to be an enormous problem, or really, no problem at all? We don’t know yet,” said Simon Freakley, CEO of consultancy AlixPartners. “Notwithstanding that one is sort of bracing oneself in the blast radius, there is quite a lot to be optimistic about.”

A warmer climate for mergers also helps the mood. Trump is often cast as the antithesis of Davos Man, but Davos is as transactional as it is high-minded. For many of the leaders here this week, success in 2025 will be about the art of the deal.

What’s On Today

3 p.m.: First impressions on Inauguration Day with Mina Al-Oraibi, Editor-in-Chief of The National, Gerard Baker, Editor-at-Large at The Wall Street Journal, and Zanny Minton Beddoes, Editor-in-Chief of The Economist @ Davos-Klosters

5 p.m.: Cisco executive cocktail reception @ Cisco Lounge

5 p.m.: Trump inauguration watch event, hosted by WaPo @ The Hard Rock Hotel

5.30 p.m.: Edelman welcome cocktail reception @ the Kirchner Museum

6 p.m.: The Crystal Awards 2025 with David Beckham, designer Diane von Furstenberg, and Pritzker Prize laureate Riken Yamamoto @ Davos-Klosters

7.30 p.m.: Business Avengers Dinner hosted by Project Everyone, featuring actor Michael Shannon @ Goals House

9 p.m.: Qualcomm, Manchester United, and (RED) special reception @ Qualcomm Haus Promenade 69

10 p.m.: Nightcap with Authentic and David Beckham @ Goals House

Curtain-raisers

We read the big Davos thumb-suckers so you don’t have to:

Dead serious: The top risk to the world in the forum’s annual report is “state-based armed conflict,” according to the forum’s annual risk report. Volodymyr Zelenskyy will be in town this week.

The big question: Will Davos “more openly embrace the role it has effectively been playing for years now, as a C.E.O. conference?” asks Dealbook.

Climate collapse: The Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero is “struggling to convene a meeting to discuss the future of climate collaboration” ahead of Davos, the FT reports.

Big India: “India, Inc.” — worried about tariffs and Trump visa changes — will be at Davos in force, including “the entire Ambani family,” per Business Standard.

Little England: Chancellor Rachel Reeves is coming to town “in the hope of convincing some of the world’s largest companies to invest.”

Trump’s governor: Arkansas’ Sarah Huckabee Sanders will be in town to “hold Big Tech accountable” at a panel with author Jonathan Haidt, and to “tell Arkansas’ success story.”

What not to do: “Skiing. Getting drunk. Taking a car,” says Fortune’s Peter Vanham, a former WEF staffer. We at Semafor think you can get away with any two of those three.

Flags and Eagles

USA House makes its promenade debut this year. Host Dave Ackerman was tightlipped on what will go on inside, but suggested we should not hold out hope for Elon or Trump.

Davos burghers grow restive

There’s Davos, the spectacle, and then there’s Davos, the town. Behind the temporary structures and police cordons is a hamlet of about 12,000 that sees another 3,000 official WEF attendees and hundreds more hangers-on show up every year. The locals don’t love it.

“There are negative side effects in terms of traffic, price levels, noise and air pollution,” Severin Bischof, spokesman for Mayor Philipp Wilhelm, tells Semafor. “It is in the nature of large events that they push the existing infrastructure to its limits. This is hardly avoidable at an event of this size. Nevertheless, the municipality of Davos, together with the organizers, is trying to continuously improve the situation.”

To that end, a town ordinance passed last spring limits permits for temporary structures — the pavilions and hollow-walled huts glommed onto existing hotels and storefronts — to accredited WEF members only. That has created a thriving, if informal market for subleasing, Semafor hears, but is intended to bring some crowd control.

It passed with 82% support, over the objections of a local homeowners’ association. “The curiosity for new market opportunities remains unbroken,” the group wrote in the Davoser Zeitung. “Everyone should have the opportunity for free (commercial) development. Especially in cosmopolitan Davos.”

— Liz Hoffman

Crash Pad

As the world grapples with economic uncertainty, technological leaps, and shifting geopolitical dynamics, global finance finds itself at a pivotal moment. Digital currencies, decentralized finance (DeFi), green finance, and AI-driven decision-making are transforming capital flows, risk management, and value creation.

Semafor’s Business Editor Liz Hoffman will sit down with Douglas Sieg, CEO, Lord Abbett and Tal Cohen, President of Nasdaq, to explore how these trends are reshaping the industry and what strategies can best position stakeholders to address challenges and capitalize on new opportunities.

Jan. 21, 2025 | Davos, Switzerland | Request Invitation

• Donald Trump will be sworn in as the 47th president of the United States at 12 p.m. ET (6 pm in Davos) at the US Capitol. The inauguration ceremony was moved indoors due to extremely cold temperatures expected in Washington.
• China is sending Vice President Han Zheng to Trump’s inauguration, after the incoming US president extended an invitation to Xi Jinping. Also expected in attendance: Argentine President Javier Milei, Reform UK leader Nigel Farage, former NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg, and a collection of tech leaders.
• There will be a White House tea, luncheon, parade, and three balls geared toward military service members, Trump supporters, and big-ticket donors, among other events.
• Trump is expected to sign a raft of executive actions after he takes office that are likely to cover numerous policy areas, including immigration, trade, and energy.
• It’s unclear how many Cabinet members will be in place by Day One... Secretary of State nominee Marco Rubio appears likely to be confirmed by the Senate by then, but other officials are less certain.

Check, Please

The estimated value of the food and drink offered to each attendee of McKinsey’s Davos nightcap. Guests of the consultancy, which has weathered several ethical storms, have been asked to confirm they are not breaching any laws by accepting such hospitality, or expecting any quid pro quo.

One Good Text

Klaus Schwab is the founder of the World Economic Forum.

Reading List

Before this Swiss ski town was synonymous with the World Economic Forum, it occupied iconic places in the history of literature, tourism, and philosophy. This is Thomas Mann’s Magic Mountain, of course. It’s also the scene of a defining 1920s faceoff that shaped the history of philosophy. And Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s sojourn here, and his subsequent dispatches about it, helped kick off a British craze for alpine skiing.

So the WEF’s Global Risks Report is not Davos’ only contribution to global literature. Here are a few recommended reads for this surprisingly slow Monday — or for the train back to Zürich.

• Time of the Magicians, Wolfram Eilenberger’s study of four great 20th-century thinkers, opens with a legendary 1929 debate at the Grandhotel Belvédère between Martin Heidegger and Ernst Cassirer.
• WEF alum Thierry Malleret’s Deaths at Davos is a geopolitical thriller about elites who “came to talk about things instead of doing them” in a conclave where “money always has the last word.” He’s in town promoting the sequel, Deaths in Davos 2.0, which came out last week.
• Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Davos ski trip popularised the sport and inspired The Final Problem, in which Sherlock Holmes faces Professor Moriarty alone at the Reichenbach Falls after a sick woman arriving from Davos distracts sidekick Dr. Watson.
• Peter Goodman’s Davos Man: How the billionaires devoured the world is a polemic about rich executives whose high-altitude talk of corporate social responsibility seems at odds with their reluctance to pay taxes.
• Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain is the classic Davos novel. Inspired by a visit to a local sanatorium that was treating his wife, Mann’s meditation on time and the fragility of civilization remains influential 100 years after it appeared.

— Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson

Chicago Fed President Austan Goolsbee said he isn’t worried about the economy overheating, despite some market concerns, and sees the labor market stabilizing, which could allow the central bank to resume its rate cuts, he told Semafor’s Liz Hoffman in an interview.

Recent data has some analysts and investors worried that a too-hot economy could force the Fed to rethink its path down from high borrowing costs.