Donald Trump wasted no time in upsetting the political establishment after starting his second term in the White House on Monday. On Thursday, Trump took the show on the road.

Trump – speaking via video link – addressed thousands of the world’s top business, political, academic, and civil service leaders who were gathered at the Davos World Economic Forum high in the Swiss Alps. More than 50 heads of state and heads of government were there in person.

In a sprawling 45-minute address Trump sparred with European regulators (he said they were too tough on U.S. tech companies), bankers (Trump stated they didn’t cater enough to conservatives), oil producing nations (he accused them of keeping energy prices too high), and foreign financiers (he said they should invest more money in the U.S. or face tariffs).

“My message to every business in the world is very simple,” Trump told an auditorium filled with World Economic Forum attendees. “Come and make your product in America and we will give you among the lowest taxes of any nation on earth. But if you don’t make your product in America, which is your prerogative, then, you will have to, very simply, pay a tariff.”

Trump’s speech and exchange with a panel of high-profile Davos participants set the summit abuzz, occasionally sparking applause as well as whispered comments in the auditorium.

But even before addressing the gathering, Trump was the main topic of conversation in formal and informal discussions in Davos, notwithstanding an ambitious five-day agenda that featured talks ranging from the risks of artificial intelligence to global conflicts, from climate change to natural disasters, and from crypto currencies to interest rates.

The Davos summit, held at the start of each year at a ski resort in the Swiss Alps, was created in 1971 to provide a largely informal forum for global leaders to discuss important global challenges. Taking place each January, the event often intersects with U.S. presidential inaugurations – four years ago, Davos got underway just five days after Democratic President Joe Biden took office, and in 2017, the event ended on the day Trump took office for his first term.

But World Economic Forum veterans told Just the News there had never been a summit so dominated by a single figure as it was by Trump this year.

“There have been dominant topics, like the coronavirus that canceled one Davos meeting and delayed the next one, or security after the Sept. 11 attacks,” said one senior European business figure who has only missed a handful of Davos meetings since he began attending in the late 1990s, asking not to be further identified. 

“But I never recalled a single person to be so omnipresent here, especially one who wasn’t even in Davos," he said. "Trump’s name came up in almost every conversation.”

This year’s event, which concludes Friday, began on Trump's Inauguration Day and his  flurry of first-day activity – more than two dozen executive orders and hundreds of pardons – immediately raised eyebrows in Davos and pushed most other topics into the background. And that was before Trump’s address Thursday, the first time he spoke at the forum since attending in person during the 2020 presidential campaign.

If there was a silver medal among the most discussed Davos topics this year, it would go to artificial intelligence, the technology that was expected to be at center stage when the agenda was set last year. That intended priority was in evidence when it came to the streets of Davos, where companies like Intel, Workday, Salesforce, Infosys, and Accenture boasted about their AI credentials from their temporary Davos offices (usually converted shops and cafes).

But Trump may have still had the last word, even on that topic, promising the U.S. would emerge as a “global superpower artificial intelligence” thanks to at least $500 billion in new AI infrastructure investments from private companies coupled with what he said would be a regulatory regime laid back to an unprecedented degree.

“My administration has also begun the largest deregulation campaign in history, far exceeding even the record-setting efforts of my last term,” Trump said.