President Donald Trump is scheduled to join a bevy of world leaders and assorted CEOs and billionaires in Switzerland next week, although his first order of business is keeping the U.S. government open.
He’ll be the first U.S. president to join the well-heeled gathering since Bill Clinton in 2000, and plans to bring along seven cabinet members to join him.
The White House didn’t immediately respond to questions about whether Trump or his cabinet members would still go if the U.S. government isn’t open for business. A shutdown will send agencies scrambling to make contingency plans, corral workers into their offices without pay, and digest plans from Washington, such as a National Park Policy that will open facilities but not pay for trash removal.
President Donald Trump is scheduled to speak at the World Economic Forum in Davos next week
Several international leaders are striving to make the most out of the event.
French President Emmanuel Macron will be hosting over 100 CEOs of major multinationals at the chateau of Versailles to try to persuade them to invest, the Associated Press reported.
He is hoping to capitalize on dysfunction in other capitals to make the pitch for France.
Dozens of CEOS were expected, from Coca-Cola, Google, Facebook, JP Morgan, and other firms.
Trump met with Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer Friday – who the White House was already blaming for the ‘Schumer shutdown’ – in order to try to head off a closing of government facilities midnight Friday.
House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (L) is expected to join Trump in Davos – if the U.S. government stays open
India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be in Davos, along with a delegation that is offering yoga classes on the slopes to promote the nation’s traditions, the foreign minister’s office to Reuters.
The country has gone through a boom that now has it ranked seventh in the world.
Two yoga teachers from India will be holding daily classes, which could provide a welcome reprieve for fatigued executives.
Leading Saudi Arabia’s delegation will be state minister Ibrahim al-Assaf, who was released from detention from a converted Ritz Carlton hotel during a corruption purge.
Assaf is a board member of the Saudi oil company Aramco.
French President Emmanuel Macron will tout investment in France to CEOs at Versailles
British Prime Minister Theresa May (L) and French President Emmanuel Macron (R) attend a reception at the Victoria and Albert Museum, Central London, Britain, 18 January 2018. Trump and May are scheduled to meet in Davos
Besides giving a Friday speech, Trump will meet with British Prime Minister Theresa May, following the postponement of a trip by President Trump to Great Britain. Trump sent out a tweet last week blasting the new U.S. embassy facility he was expected to open in person.
‘President Trump looks forward to having a bilateral meeting with UK Prime Minister May in Davos next week to further strengthen the US–UK Special Relationship. Other details on the President’s schedule at Davos will be announced next week,’ said the White House in a brief statement by press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California and Rep. Mark Meadows of North Carolina both were scheduled to join Trump in Davos.
McCarthy’s office said he wouldn’t go if there was a shutdown.
House minority leader Nancy Pelosi blasted the House for its planned week-long recess.
‘Every year the Republicans plan the January schedule so that they can go to Davos,’ Pelosi said in a statement. ‘They want to spend next week hobnobbing with their elitist friends instead of honoring their responsibilities to the American people.’
Trump will be entering something of a lion’s den when he visits the elitist enclave of Davos next week, rubbing shoulders with the same ‘globalists’ that he campaigned against in winning the 2016 election.
Aides said some of Trump’s advisers had argued against him attending the World Economic Forum in order to steer clear of the event, which brings together political leaders, CEOs and top bankers.
But in the end, they said, Trump, the first sitting U.S. president to attend the forum since Bill Clinton in 2000, wanted to go to call attention to growth in the U.S. economy and the soaring stock market.
A senior administration official said Trump is expected to take a double-edged message to the forum in Switzerland, where he is to deliver a speech and meet some world leaders.
In his speech, Trump is expected to urge the world to invest in the United States to take advantage of his deregulatory and tax cut policies, stress his ‘America First’ agenda and call for fairer, more reciprocal trade, the official said.
During his 2016 election campaign, Trump blamed globalization for ravaging American manufacturing jobs as companies sought to reduce labor costs by relocating to Mexico and elsewhere.
‘Globalization has made the financial elite who donate to politicians very wealthy. But it has left millions of our workers with nothing but poverty and heartache,’ he said on June 28, 2016, in Pennsylvania.
Trump retains the same anti-globalist beliefs but has struggled to rewrite trade deals that he sees as benefiting other countries.
Trump will be speaking two days after German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron in Davos.
Both ardent defenders of multilateralism and liberal democratic values, they are expected to lay out the counter-argument to Trump´s ‘America First’ policies. Merkel and Macron have lobbied Trump hard to keep the United States in the Paris climate accord and Iran nuclear pact, only for him to distance himself from those deals.
There is acute concern in European capitals that 2018 could be the year Trump´s bark on trade turns into bite, as he considers punitive measures on steel and threatens to end the 90s-era North American Free Trade Agreement with Canada and Mexico.
He has backed off withdrawing from a U.S. trade agreement with South Korea and while he has threatened to terminate NAFTA, he has yet to do so.
Trump´s tax cuts are a source of concern in Europe, where policymakers are discussing steps to extract more tax dollars out of U.S. multinationals such as Google and Amazon. European governments now fear a ‘race to the bottom’ on corporate tax rates and a shift to more investment in the United States by some of their big companies.
In a Reuters interview on Thursday, Trump lamented that it is rare that he meets the leader of a foreign country that has a trade deficit with the United States.
Based on official data for the year to November, China exported goods worth $461 billion and the United States ran a trade deficit of $344 billion. Trump said he would be announcing some kind of action against China over trade. He is to discuss the issue during his State of the Union address to the U.S. Congress on Jan. 30.
Asked about the potential for a trade war with China depending on U.S. action over steel, aluminum and solar panels, Trump said he hoped a trade war would not ensue.
‘I don’t think so, I hope not. But if there is, there is,’ he said.
Trump and the U.S. Congress are racing to meet a midnight Friday deadline to pass a short-term bill to keep the U.S. government open and prevent agencies from shutdown.
But if a government shutdown does occur and is prolonged, there is always a chance it could complicate Trump’s plans to go to Davos.