Carney shares a cold, hard truth: The world was unfair before Trump

The 2026 edition of the World Economic Forum (WEF) gathering at Davos in Switzerland will be remembered as a tale of two speakers, two ideologies, and a singular concession that could rewrite the rules of global engagement.

Donald Trump – the imperial leader of the US who has spent the past year starting trade wars, political purges and international extractions with reckless abandon, made the trip to Davos just a year after his January 2025 inauguration.

Read: Trump promises ‘common sense’ ideas in inaugural address [Jan 2025]

His mission since that day has been to make an indelible imprint on the global political scene that he imagines will never be forgotten, and he is probably right.

While the World Economic Forum lacks the political legitimacy of multilateral institutions like the United Nations, the Bretton Woods institutions and the military and economic alliances that have been formed over the past 80 years, its ability to marshal the political, business and academic elites of the globe for its annual jamboree is unmatched in prestige.

Its debatable legitimacy notwithstanding, the WEF has also largely mirrored the prevailing consensus of the world that has been in place for decades.

Countries that subscribe to multilateralism, worship globalisation and champion free trade find the WEF to be an event that resonates loudly with what they believe in.

Its big drawcards tend to be the political and business leaders who are the flavour of the moment. And when newly inaugurated presidents and newly minted billionaires are seen in attendance, it reinforces the WEF’s standing as the global town hall capable of setting the agenda for the rest of the world.

As one would expect, a forum that depends largely on the veneer of legitimacy as its selling point is likely to mirror the practices of other multilateral institutions and unlikely to stick to principles when they conflict with its ability to galvanise the attention of the elites.

This means that when institutions like the UN conduct themselves in a manner reflective of the political power dynamics of the world rather than principles, a WEF-like forum is unlikely to go against the grain.

Into this world came a divisive character …

When a US president’s stance on diplomacy, international trade, the rule of law. and principles of engagement is alienating and diametrically opposed to the globalist agenda of the WEF, the forum finds itself at a crossroads.

Exiling the leader of the biggest economic and military behemoth in the world and still expecting to be taken seriously simply wouldn’t work.

Trump’s absence in 2025 was the dominant echo on the Swiss slopes. Does the absence of the biggest player in the room signal a declining relevance that might lead to a greater exodus?

But when Trump is present, the question of what he will say and who he will target causes even greater anxiety.

His attendance in 2026 – after a year of continuously mocking, undermining and attacking all that the WEF class holds so dear – elevated the anxiety as no one knew who or what the next target of his agenda would be.

The Davos event coincided with his current fixations – ‘losing’ awards (the Nobel Peace Pize), kidnapping presidents, and annexing countries – and he turned his address into yet another call for the world to accede to his demands.

Read:
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The core problem of his annexation mission is that it puts him at odds with the one alliance where the US participation has been a foundational pillar – the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato).

Nato, the intergovernmental military alliance with 32 member states, was founded in the aftermath of World War II.

The idea that a Nato member could not only depart from the alliance, but possibly go to war with the alliance, was the single most explicit reminder that the post-war consensus is completely dead.

In the emerging vacuum, the tendency to placate Trump and continuously concede to his ever-unpredictable demands has left leaders embarrassed and confused in equal measure.

Read: Trump floats 200% champagne tariff and reveals Macron’s text

Even those who regarded the fate of their nations as intrinsically linked to the US and headed to the White House to argue for some leniency from the manic manifestations of Trump’s random actions discovered that reason and logic were no match for the Maga (‘Make America Great Again’) agenda.

The reality is that Trump’s prism of the world is made up of the US, the big nations that are powerful enough to be a possible threat to the US, and absolutely everyone else – even if their relevance remains lost on Trump.

Unfortunately, the list of those nations is essentially the entire universe.

Carney delivers the cold, hard truth

When Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney delivered his seminal address at Davos, he forced everyone in the room to make peace with the fact that Trump has indeed sliced the world into the superpowers, the middle powers and everyone else that has historically been ignored.

Carney called for the world to realise that the manufactured narrative of the world – a world in which international rules, principles and laws are applied with some element of fairness, consistency and equity – is actually a sham.

This was the necessary antidote to the ruinous rhetoric of the US president.

As the leader of a country that has historically benefitted from the ambivalence of the manufactured consensus, Canada would have been fine for as long as the US and other superpowers stuck to the script and unleashed the more acute execution of their power on other nations.

Read:

Whether it is invasions under the guise of spreading democracy or seeking to find imagined weapons of mass destruction, the rollout of hard power has happened away from the borders of countries like Canada – so even though these actions indicated that the global system was unfair, arbitrary and discriminatory, the victims had to deal with it and countries that were not directly affected owed no duty of solidarity towards the ‘outsiders’.

Countries like South Africa – which has continuously called for reforms to critical institutions like the UN Security Council, whose power dynamics mirror the immediate aftermath of Hitler’s demise rather than the globally connected, postcolonial world of today – were seen as rabble rousers whose quest for change was not actually supported by the many nations who would benefit from a system that is equitable in practice.

The Trump doctrine of lumping everyone together and making no distinction between those that have adopted an oath of compliance and complicity has exposed the fragility of the manufactured consensus.

Carney’s call for everyone else to acknowledge their role as beneficiaries of a broken system will indeed force many countries to revisit their role and responsibility in the global landscape.

The previous theory that Trump was a once-off aberration reflective of internal political developments within the US is no longer tenable – not only has he managed to secure a second term, he is rapidly and decisively repurposing institutions internally and internationally that will make it very difficult for them to return to the old ways of doing things even after his presidency.

By forcing the reset, Trump has forced everyone to break away from the dependency on such institutions and the tolerance of the rules underpinning a broken system.

How everyone reacts to it is not just a matter of Trump’s legacy – it is the genesis of a world beyond the age of a manufactured consensus.

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