The World Economic Forum will hold its annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland,
next week is the first time in the winter since the pandemic.
And Afsane Beschloss of Rock Creek has been to her own fair share of these
gatherings over the years. And it's fair to say.
And she stayed with us to give us a preview.
So, Sunny, how will this when do you think be different from what we've seen
before? So, David, you're absolutely right, I've
been going since the nineteen nineties in the past, and and I think what's
happening this time is you have the usual cast of characters, you I think
more than 50 heads of states, more than 300 the ministers or, you know,
government officials, more than 600 CEOs of different companies.
What is different is that sort of spirit of cooperation that it is supposed to
bring about is under question. Right.
There's a lot of geopolitical strife going on as we speak.
The Chinese who did not going to the last few meetings in terms of the
meetings that were not in person or the first one that was in person in the
spring. I think maybe one person will have
obviously now that they have the Covid reopening, they will have more people,
but not too many seems to be more people from the Middle East and from Asia going
so that the competition is changing. Less people in Europe from Europe and
us, as you had said earlier. And Russia is not invited.
So, you know, it's hard to have conversations around difficult subjects
when some people are not going to be around the table.
The big, big topic, David, I think is going to be, you know, the one criticism
of Davos and the World Economic Forum, but also other meetings like that, such
as COP 27 and others, is people get together and there are a lot of lofty
statements that are made by governments, by corporations.
And, you know, some would argue that there's very little follow up.
And that is really the big, big question.
Will there will it be different this year?
Well, that's just exactly what I want to ask you, because one of the subjects,
for example, they said they will talk about inequality, wealth inequality,
income inequality, which goodness knows is a problem around the world.
And we will have some, if I can call that activists really speak up for the
less fortunate and they will talk truth to power and truth will power will
listen very politely. But will they hear anything come of it?
And I think, David, one of the issues is that you have the people who are in the
building and the activists who are generally outside the building, maybe
they come for one or two sessions in the building, as it were.
So you don't really have enough of a dialogue.
And I think that's one of the things that the World Economic Forum has tried
to change. And it's difficult.
And it's probably something that it needs to spend more time on.
But in terms of sort inequality, the fact that inequality is bigger is a very
big problem. The interesting thing is that, for
example, in the past, multilateral institutions have come together and
talked about how to work together on big problems such as, for example, right now
you're facing huge debt problems in the lowest income countries.
But it sounds like that won't happen at this meeting.
And countries like in sub-Saharan Africa who are going to have the lowest growth
rate, according to the World Bank, in a very long time, are not necessarily
going to be on the agenda. Let me ask Afsane, because one of the
really themes of the WEF over years has been globalization.
There's globalization, help or hurt when it comes to inequality.
Because I can see it either way. Yes.
I mean, as economists, we we were taught about, you know, the theory of
globalization being a good thing. I think globalizing there's these big
words, whether it's globalization or globalization means so many different
things. It really depends.
Because right now we're seeing that we are equal.
But in practice, we're changing the ways we are trading.
Right. It's not going in the direction of trade
like, you know, huge amount of trade going from China into other countries.
You're starting to talk about whether it is near shoring or French shoring, that
is still trade, that still people trading with each other.
So I think if we look in five years, it may not be the same trend of trade as we
saw before. But the globe has come together and
people are going to need each other. And we're seeing, for example, a Korean
company coming to invest in Georgia in a solid a huge solar power plant for 2.5
billion. So that is part of globalization.
Really briefly here at the end. Afsane, is international trade and
globalization consistent with populism? It certainly has created the problem,
David, off of moving jobs to certain places again, you know, China was the
big beneficiary and bringing wages down often to a level that is not a living
wage. And that certainly has created populism.
And that's why you're not seeing, for example, you go to Germany and the
German government has reduced energy costs by 80 percent for people, for 80
percent of energy for people so that the poor are not impacted by this high
energy prices.