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This time last year Donald Trump was beamed into Davos from Washington to deliver a virtual address that put business and political leaders on notice; the free-trading, liberal economic model, reaffirmed and celebrated every January at the World Economic Forum, was over.
Back then, shell-shocked European leaders and central bankers emerged from the hall wondering if he was serious. Twelve months on, there can be no doubt, and the US president will be in the Alps in-person to emphatically underline the point.
President Trump will lead an 80-strong US delegation including five members of the cabinet and his most influential policy and diplomatic advisors.
Money latest: Market sell-off deepens after Trump threat to Europe
It amounts to an almighty American flex at what remains the highest-powered intersection of global business and politics, and he arrives with policy chaos flowing in his slipstream like contrails from Air Force One.
The tariffs threatened against Greenland’s Nordic and northern European allies, including the UK, are both the most serious rift in transatlantic relations in decades, and just another expression of the president’s willingness to deploy economic weapons against allies as well as adversaries.
It comes just a fortnight after the return of US gunboat diplomacy in Venezuela, where the prize is not apparently democracy but oil, with 50 million barrels as a down payment.
And all of this as economies were recalibrating following the indiscriminate ‘Liberation Day’ tariffs of last April.
What happens next, as ever, depends in large part on Trump, but Davos at least provides a platform for negotiations.
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