DAVOS, Switzerland — When U.S. President Donald Trump arrives in the snowy Alpine village of Davos this week, it will mark both the culmination of a yearlong courtship — and a turning point for a forum once synonymous with liberal globalism.

This year’s World Economic Forum, which starts Monday, underscores a sharp shift for an event long caricatured as a “woke” talking shop: Climate and diversity have slipped down the agenda, AI and growth are ascendant, and the United States — led by Trump and his inner circle — is set to dominate the stage. That shift coincided with a monthslong campaign to land the U.S. president and reassert Davos’ relevance after years of drift.

“Post-Davos last year, I started discussions with the White House and also coordinating with Chief of Staff Susie Wiles,” Børge Brende, president and CEO of the World Economic Forum, told POLITICO in a video call from his office in Geneva last week.

“I also visited D.C. in early December, had meetings in the White House, but also with the different Cabinet secretaries, and now we are in a situation where Trump is coming, and we also have five key Cabinet secretaries,” he said. “There will be a broad footprint of the U.S. in Davos.”

Brende, a former Norwegian foreign minister, has clearly made it his mission to secure star speakers for the Alpine summit of the world’s business and political elite.

After limp Covid-era editions, a sharp jump in participation costs and leadership turmoil for the WEF, Trump’s star turn — flanked by many of MAGA’s most powerful players — amounts to a vote of confidence in a forum some had written off as outdated or adrift.

That U.S. dominance coincides with a broader shift in the program itself. 

The same gathering that once gave Greta Thunberg its main stage for her “our house is on fire” warning about the climate crisis, that celebrated an all-female lineup of co-chairs in the wake of #MeToo, and that pushed governments to track progress toward the United Nations’ Paris Agreement and the Sustainable Development Goals — is now clearing space for Trump’s MAGA agenda at a moment when the U.S. president has once again upended global diplomacy by threatening tariffs on European countries over their resistance to his efforts to take over Greenland.

Trump’s entourage will include Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, Energy Secretary Chris Wright, U.S. special envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner.

The VIP treatment is evident. Brende twice stopped the interview to take a call from Kushner.

“Say hello to Ivanka,” he said, before muting himself.

Woke is out, AI is in

This year’s WEF has the somewhat milquetoast theme of “A Spirit of Dialogue.” Previously trendy topics around green and diversity have been largely stripped out and replaced with formulations like “building prosperity within planetary boundaries” and “investing in people.”

Elite participants will be treated to discussions like “Business Case for Nature,” “Corporate Ladders, AI Reshuffled” and “Science as a Growth Engine,” with the juggernaut AI industry and its potential for economic growth a key focus of the program.

Asked whether the agenda was tailored to draw in the Trump administration, Brende said the forum is “independent, impartial” and the agenda is “as we planned and is not edited by any outside players.”

Intentional or not, there’s a clear bend away from “woke” topics for this edition — though Davos regulars argue it reflects the moment rather than a conscious strategy.

It’s “entirely reasonable to focus on environmental, social justice concerns, but right now the world is much more concerned with the thorny questions of geopolitics,” said Clayton Allen, practice head for the United States at the Eurasia Group.

Mike Rubino, a former Trump administration official, now a partner at Forward Global and Ballard Partners, said the shift in focus is “kind of part and parcel of the new world order.” 

“That stuff has gone out of fashion,” he said, pointing to the rise and fall of nuclear energy on the Davos agenda and the waning attention paid to the Ukraine war.

Meanwhile, Davos’ traditional billionaire business and finance class will be meeting AI “hyperscalers” as they toast record highs in their personal wealth. 

The head of AI giant Nvidia, Jensen Huang, is another star speaker, while top executives from Microsoft, Meta, Palantir, Anthropic and OpenAI will stack meetings on the sidelines with firms like JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, BlackRock and Salesforce.

U.S. out in force 

The Trump administration will be the star presence at Davos this year — and the focus of much of the dealmaking around it.

Allen said his clients are “massively interested in anything relating to Trump’s approach to the rest of the world. Anything Trump does, any interaction he has with foreign leaders … just huge interest.”

A slate of European leaders are expected in Davos. They will be scrambling to negotiate with Trump over his threat of fresh tariffs against the EU related to the White House campaign to take control of Greenland, and the suspension of the EU-U.S. trade deal.

French President Emmanuel Macron and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen are among those attending, alongside leaders from Germany, Poland, Spain and several other EU countries, as well as NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is also expected, alongside leaders who hope to use the forum to lock in U.S. commitments on a potential Ukraine peace framework, whether by endorsing American-backed security guarantees or securing his backing for a narrower economic pact tied to Ukraine’s postwar recovery.

“There’s much more excitement” this year, Rubino said. 

“You’re seeing a scramble of CEOs not just attempting to gain access to the reception that [Trump] will be hosting, but also to gain entrance to the USA House,” he added, referring to the small church hosting U.S. administration officials and business leaders throughout the week, sponsored at top dollar by Microsoft and McKinsey.

One U.S. CEO has played a pivotal role in shoring up the WEF: BlackRock’s Larry Fink. 

Fink was brought in as interim co-chair after WEF founder Klaus Schwab resigned amid whistleblower allegations over his management of the forum. (A WEF probe found “no evidence of material wrongdoing.”) His departure was followed by a public back-and-forth over whether European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde would step down before the end of her mandate to fill Schwab’s shoes, which she ultimately denied. 

After those “challenging times,” WEF leadership “moved fast” to shore things up, Brende said. Fink, along with Swiss billionaire businessman André Hoffmann, brought financial and business clout to the organization and were sufficiently well-connected to attract star speakers. 

The arrangement has been going “really well,” Brende said. “I speak to them almost every day, and it’s a great team.” 

 According to one insider, WEF founder Schwab is expected to skip this year’s summit.