Links tagged “Davos”

Moderator of World Economic Forum event in Davos: "So I'm going to throw this immediately out to the audience and say, How many of you are driving any electric vehicle at the moment? One, two, three, four. So, I would say that probably constitutes less than 5% of the persons sitting here in this room."

Adam Creighton, The Australian: For Trump, this year’s conference was a platform to rub his success in the noses of the world’s elite, who had largely written him off when he was running for the White House in 2016, then derided his early years as President — and now face his likely re-election before the next Davos meeting in January next year.
 
“The American dream is back, bigger, better and stronger than ever before … and no one is benefiting more than America’s middle-class,” Trump told the forum. It’s a claim, however galling for the audience, that is becoming harder to refute. Wage growth in the US has picked up under his presidency, rising back above 3 per cent and bringing to an end a period of real income stagnation more than a decade long.

The most interesting and significant passages of Trump’s talk concerned energy and the environment. It’s hard to believe that any other Republican would have made such a strong, uncompromising case as he did. To his wealthy, privileged audience in Davos who believe climate change and decarbonization are the existential issues of the age, Trump gave no quarter. America was on the threshold of virtually unlimited reserves of energy, he reminded them — and he wasn’t going to give up America’s energy advantage. He berated European governments for their high energy prices, contrasting them with the average $2,500 reduction in electric bills of American households. He understands what European politicians and business leaders have forgotten in their rush to embrace climate alarmism: People will maintain faith in a market system only so long as their living standards improve.

The president rejected what he rightly called the “prophets of doom” and their failed predictions of apocalypse. “They are the heirs of yesterday’s foolish fortune-tellers,” he told the Davos crowd, which happens to believe in the prophecies of the current generation of fortune-tellers. “They want to see us do badly. We won’t let that happen.”  

“After she goes and studies economics in college, she can come back and explain that to us”, Mnuchin said while taking questions during the conference at the World Economic Forum (WEF) alongside Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross.

Mnuchin then jokingly wondered: "Is she the chief economist? Who is she? I'm confused".

His comments come after President Donald Trump lashed out against the "prophets of doom" regarding climate change, saying that eco campaigners were overly pessimistic and should instead concentrate their criticisms on countries that emit more planet-warming greenhouse gas.

Though up one spot from the same survey a year ago, climate-related issues lag way behind other concerns such as over-regulation, which ranks as the number 1 worry. Other concerns in the top 10 include trade conflicts, lack of skills among workers and populism in politics.

According to the survey, 24% of CEOs are “extremely concerned” about climate-related issues, compared to 38% for over-regulation.