Davos 101: A Preview of the World Economic Forum 2026

0:02Good morning, Brew Daily Show. I'm Neil Freiman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today, why the heck are we in Switzerland? I'll tell you why. We're at the World Economic Forum in Davos. It's Monday, January 19th. Let's ride.

0:20Good morning. Today is Martin Luther King Jr. Day in the United States, a federal holiday that honors the life and legacy of the civil rights giant. It's also designated as a national day of service, pushing Americans to get involved in their local communities and volunteer. A great message today and every day. As for this morning's show, it's a unique one. As you may have heard last week, Toby and I are in Davos, Switzerland, for the World Economic Forum, the biggest annual gathering of business leaders and officials anywhere on the planet. Today's episode, which we recorded late last week, will give you a preview of what's expected to happen at Davos, why it's important, and how much Toby will pay for a hot dog.

1:01We're going to be here all week bringing you the pod live from snowy Switzerland. It's our first World Economic Forum, so our goal is to have our lanyards on straight first and foremost, but also to be the eyes and ears on the ground for you guys. We'll be conducting some interviews with founders, but also just catching the vibe. What are the movers and shakers of the global economy talking about? Is the deep state real? And if it is, do they also wear lanyards? It should be fun, and we'll bring you guys along for the entire ride. But first, a word from our sponsor, Indeed. Indeed. Hey, Neil, bet you're pretty jealous.

1:34I'll be in Davos this week for the World Economic Forum. Toby, I'm here too. Oh, I thought this was a me thing. No, you're not that special. And Indeed is here as well. They'll share real-time insight into the global labor market and how leaders can navigate the workforce challenges and opportunities ahead. Thankfully, Indeed's helping business leaders and hiring professionals dive into these perspectives through their global labor market and workforce trends report. These insights include where job opportunities are growing where skills shortages and mismatches could impact business performance, how immigration patterns are shaping workforce capacity, and how AI is transforming job skills and employer adoption.

2:11Together, these insights help leaders prepare for what's next and make better workforce decisions grounded in real-time data. Learn more at indeed.com slash Davos. That's indeed.com slash Davos. President Trump is the main attraction at this year's forum. For the first time since 2020, Trump is descending upon Switzerland with the largest U.S. delegation ever in tow. Trump in Davos is a little like oil in water on paper given his American first policies that tend to class with the forum's historical emphasis on global cooperation. But given the attention he's paid to the global chessboard in his second term, there will be plenty to discuss with other attendees.

2:53The CEO of the World Economic Forum said the meeting will take place, quote, against the most complex geopolitical backdrop since 1945. And I think that will be the key theme of the U.S.'s presence this year. Heightened geopolitical tensions, how its economic might has been weaponized to a certain extent, and some of the strain that's put on the U.S.'s alliances. Yeah, Trump's big speech will take place on Wednesday, and he's expected to focus on a lot of the affordability issues that he's rolled out just in the first week or two of 2026. Remember, he's trying to put that temporary cap on credit card interest rates at 10 percent that has shaken up the entire banking industry.

3:33He also opened a criminal investigation or the DOJ opened a criminal investigation into Jerome Powell, which drew a lot of criticism from other world central bankers, which was a very interesting statement that they all made. And he also has attacked the private equity industry, trying to get them out of being landlords for American homes to try to solve this or at least alleviate the the affordability crisis when it comes to housing. housing. And so he's expected to touch on and elaborate on some of those themes that we've seen just in the first few days of 2026. Yeah. Davos is definitely a place where the global leaders will be hanging on Trump's world.

4:10Because as you mentioned, all of those things happened literally in the first two weeks of the year. It is still January. And yet all of those economic policies are reshaping the world. And I talked about the geopolitical stage as well. Obviously, the capture of Venezuela's leader, Nicolas Maduro, will be a hot topic. Trump's threats to invade Greenland is going to be a hot topic. So all of these storylines that have been swirling around in the first few weeks are going to be, you are face-to-face with the people that they are directly affecting at Davos, which is why everyone is looking at Trump in his big speech.

4:43Yeah, there are going to be a lot of business leaders there as well. A total of 850 CEOs and chairs of the world's top companies are going to be among there about 3 ,000 participants from 130 countries. So you got business leaders there. And then you also have heads of state, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney Trump, we talked about his coming, China's Vice Premier, He Lai Fing, Ukrainian President Zelensky, EU President Ursula von der Leyen, just go down the boards, there's going to be everyone who's anyone is going to be there all in the same place. This is why Davos is an interesting thing.

5:17This doesn't happen to have such an intense collection of not only business leaders, but world leaders in the same place, in the same town, at the same time. And they're going to talk about all these big issues, and it'll be interesting to see the business topics that come out. I think AI will obviously be a huge issue. We have Sam Altman from OpenAI, NVIDIA, Jensen Huang, Microsoft, Meta, Palantir, and Topic. They're all going to be there. So I think that will be a major topic of conversation as well. Yeah, Jensen Huang is kind of the Trump version of the AI. He is going to be the center of gravity when it comes to that discussion topic.

5:51Also, there's celebrities that go to Davos. Obviously, Neil and I are the headliners. But in addition to us, David Beckham, Yo-Yo Ma, Matt Damon, and Will.i.am will be there. Fun fact, Will.i.am is an AI startup founder. He has a company called FYI, which is an AI-driven productivity and communication platform for creatives. But it just goes to show you what we're kind of trying to lay out for you all is that there's such a wide breadth of people here that will all be rubbing elbows and mixing and just talking about what is happening with the world writ large. I hope, like Mark Carney, runs into Matt Damon and somehow that conversation happens.

6:30And somehow I hope Neil and I are part of that as well. What I think is funny is that this is the 56th edition of the World Economic Forum. It's the theme. They have a theme every year. This theme is a spirit of dialogue. Sounds a little desperate at a time when there doesn't seem to be a lot of dialogue and there's a lot of antagonism and there's a retreat from globalization. They're still trying to put dialogue and cooperation front and center. We also got a little bit of a preview in the form of the global risk report that the WEF released on Thursday. day. This is where they surveyed 1 ,300 leaders across government, business, civil society to figure out what the biggest short-term and long-term risks are facing the world.

7:07And the general mood is that the world is definitely on edge. 50 % of those surveyed expected a turbulent global conditions over the next two years. Only 1 % said they expect calm, which I would love to be in their heads and what they're thinking. Geoeconomic confrontation is now the top-ranked near-term risk, which is defined as the weaponization of tariffs, use of regulation as leverage, and supply chain control, generally using economics as a cudgel to get what you want. Feels like that is very much top of mind right now. Yeah, I also thought it was interesting. That's a short-term outlook.

7:41Over 10 years, they ask about a long-term outlook, and climate emergency was the number one topic there, and it certainly is top of mind. We just wrapped up 2025. 2025 global insured losses from natural catastrophes last year estimated to reach 107 billion dollars that is the sixth consecutive year that they've topped 100 billion dollars which is way up from the early 2000s so you go down the line whether it's two-year horizon or a 10-year horizon people are afraid of of quite a few different things and if you look at ai which is a topic that we just touched on ai related risk moved up from the 30th highest short-term risk last year to the fifth highest long-term risk in the latest ranking.

8:23So clearly people are starting to realize, hey, this all-out pursuit of a god-like AI technology is something that is probably a big long-term risk for humanity at large up there among the ranks of climate change. So it's very fascinating to see how which things start to creep up on people's minds, especially their long-term radars. And then another fascinating short-term risk, we're back to the short-term time horizon once more is that misinformation and disinformation ranks as the number two biggest risk on people mind because misinformation kind of undermines a lot of those bigger risks that we are describing.

9:00It makes coordinated responses a lot harder. If you want to fight climate change as a global humanity, misinformation is one of those things that is going to make that harder to do. It's gonna block cooperation. So especially when you have all these people in the same room, cooperation is going to be top of mind. And that is why you're seeing disinformation in the age of social media and the age of AI being one of those top of mind risks. So big picture, I think the theme for this year's Davos, since Trump has come into the White House since last January, is that global economic concerns are being overwhelmed by geopolitical concerns.

9:39And you even have this in the highest echelons of Wall Street. There's all these analysts, including Tom Lee of Fundstrat, are saying, if you're an investor right now, don't even think about what the Fed is doing. Don't even think about industries here and there doing various innovations or like throw the entire playbook out the window and just kind of focus on what the White House is doing and what Trump is saying. And that's why his speech is so big on Wednesday. What banking stocks took a tumble this week, not just not because they're doing so poorly in their business, but because he threatened a 10 % cap on interest rate payments.

10:14The same goes for Blackstone or all these other private equity companies that are big landlords. Their business might be doing okay, but their stocks and their outlook is diminishing because of what is coming from the White House. And you did mention that the U.S. is bringing its biggest delegation. There's going to be five cabinet secretaries there. Rubio Besant, who's the treasury secretary, Howard Lutnick, who's the Commerce Secretary. The United States is bringing the firepower as trying to flex, essentially, on the world stage. I don't know how much dialogue is going to be expected, but the United States is really bringing the heat.

10:50We haven't seen anything like this before. It's so funny, too, because if we go back to that risk report that I was describing, the conclusion that the World Economic Forum reached is that coalitions of the willing are essential. So that is going to be the core tension. The U.S. brought its biggest delegation ever, but somehow they're going to have to have form willing coalitions with other parts of the economy and other parts of the world. I think that's going to be the main storyline. Again, we're predicting because we'll be on the ground. We'll tell you what the main storylines are, but that is on the surface what it might look like.

11:18They got to just try you out to these meetings because you're a yapper. You like networking. You like bringing people together. You make friends. You make friends pretty easily. So I think put Toby Howell's front and center if you really want to have a forum that's filled of dialogue and bringing people together in terms of cooperation. I agree. Let's take a quick break, though, and come back with some fun facts about Davos right after this. And now time for our Morning Brew Daily Davos update with Lightspeed. This week, Morning Brew Daily is at the World Economic Forum thanks to our friends at Lightspeed.

11:49We are super excited to be here and we'll be pumping out a ton of content. Every day, we will record Morning Brew Daily from the Lightspeed house and also be interviewing various founders and CEOs that work with Lightspeed about the latest advances in technology and how those advances will impact the world. And starting tomorrow, Lightspeed founder Ravi Matra will join us to break down the trends he's watching coming out of the WEF and other big events this week. So follow along for Ravi's tips and also check out our special conversations on our Morning Brew Daily YouTube channel every day. Let's ride in Davos.

12:24You might be listening to this and thinking, why does Davos even exist and how does it matter to me? These are great questions. And to answer the first, the World Economic Forum dates back to 1971 when it was founded by the Swiss-German economist Klaus Schwab. He founded the nonprofit to promote global cooperation on pressing issues, bringing the private and public sector together to brainstorm solutions. For the organization's annual meeting, Schwab picked Davos, a ski resort in the Swiss Alps, and it's been held there every year, save one since its founding. The one year it wasn't held in Davos was 2002 when the World Economic Forum went to New York in solidarity after the 9-11 attacks.

13:05And even though we are going, it's certainly worth mentioning Davos doesn't have the best reputation and criticisms have only grown over the years. Turns out a bunch of business elites and billionaires hobnobbing in a resort town claiming to solve the world's problems over caviar doesn't sit well with a lot of people. And Davos has been frequently needled for being out of touch with the average person's concerns. Yeah, there was this book that came out in 2022 called Davos Man, which basically goes in on the attendees of Davos and how they are emblematic of all the inequality that they are saying that they are fixing in the world.

13:39A lot of people say it is billionaires telling millionaires what the middle class should do. So there's always a little bit of irony wrapped up in the fact that these people are descending on a European village in their private jets to talk about climate change. That's where a lot of some of the pushback comes from. If you are just a normal person thinking about Davos is why should these people tell me how to live my life? They don't know what's going on in my life. They're very far removed from it. They're very far removed from it, maybe mentally, but also financially. There's a new report from Oxfam America.

14:11The collective wealth of the top 10 U.S. billionaires, probably many of whom are going to be here in Switzerland over the next week, has soared by$700 billion in the past year. Oxfam also found, using Federal Reserve data from 1989 to 2022, that the top 1 % of households gained 101 times more wealth than the median household during that time span, and nearly 1 ,000 times the wealth of a household at the bottom 20th percentile of income. we've seen a lot of politicians rise to the fore over the past few years on a more populist agenda from both the left and the right, attacking billionaires, attacking wealth inequality that seems to have very much resonated with Americans and people across the world.

14:54So Davos, to many, represents the type of inequality that a lot of people are brushing up against. And then the conference itself actually makes bank. It generates$500 million annually, which is the revenue stream is heavily funded by corporate partners. So it's banks, it's consultant firms, it's tech firms. These are the companies that are paying for space within Davos and kind of making the entire conference run. And so even though the board and the says that their mission remains unchanged, that they want to facilitate global cooperation, you look at kind of who's signing the checks. It is a lot of the corporations that are present.

15:29They are making, you know, Davos and you talk about inequality, just the fact that the conference is this money-making machine too is something that comes up a lot. Does anything happen from Davos? It's a good question. It's a question that I had. And so I looked it up and typically these are backroom business deals and it's essentially just networking for billionaires, putting a face to a name, saying, oh, hey, I'm Sam Altman. Nice to meet you. I'm Jensen Huang. Like, oh, I've heard a lot about you, but now we actually meet face-to-face. So there's not actually any particular business deals that are announced from Davos.

16:05It's more of a networking event. But there are some key diplomatic breakthroughs that have occurred in Davos. For example, in 1989, North and South Korea held their first ever ministerial level meeting. So that happened in Davos. That was a big breakthrough. And then a couple of years ago in 2018, the Greek and Macedonian prime ministers met face to face for the first time in seven years, which actually paved the way for the end of a 27 year dispute over Macedonia's name. I don't know if Trump's going to get together with the prime minister of Denmark and they're going to figure out something on Greenland or the ending to the war in Ukraine will be figured out.

16:40But it does seem like they hold very high level meetings there. And some stuff does seem to be getting done. But also, you mentioned the backstory of Davos and how Klaus Schwab was the man who kind of put this old thing together. But this is actually going to be the first year that Klaus Schwab is not running the conference because he stepped down from his position after 50 years of pretty much total control over this conference, basically because he was on a thin ice. There was some investigations into his workplace culture. There was also some investigations that they were misusing personal and forum funds in different ways.

17:15So this is kind of the first step out into a new world without Schwab at the helm. It's going to be interesting to see how a conference that functions on exclusivity, on hierarchy, on private deal making is going to navigate this period without its chief architect over the last, you know, half century. All right. We're almost out of time, but I do want to wrap things up on a more upbeat note with some fun facts about Davos, because what happens here is truly bizarre. I'll go first. Davos is the highest city in Europe at about 5 ,100 feet above sea level. That was pretty shocking to me, given that many mountain towns in the U.S.

17:50are almost double that altitude breckenridge colorado is 9600 feet taos in new mexico 9300 and santa fe big city is 7100 feet above sea level all right that is just my fun facts i'm a geography nerd what you got toby well i want to comment on your fun fact a little bit there is good skiing around at davos though and apparently we are asking around what happens to the ski mountains and it's empty because everyone is at davos during the this period of time and so if somehow you were trying to plan a trip, your accommodations would be extremely expensive because everyone is in that town. But the ski mountains themselves are relatively open.

18:28So if you can commute in, maybe find, even though Neil says the mountains aren't high enough, he wants a little taller, you know, highest town in Europe. But that is some interesting trickle-down effect from Davos is that the mountains are usually pretty empty. My fun fact is that food here is so expensive. One hotel a few years ago went viral for charging$51 for a burrito, and it was on its snacks menu. A side of french fries was costing$22. And in 2015, CNBC found a hot dog on sale at the same hotel for$43. I think there is a supply and demand lesson in there somewhere, but that is just truly insane to think about.

19:11How many francs are going to paying towards that franc? That was good. A lot of those expensive food actually come from one place, the menu at one place. It's the Steigenberger Grand Hotel Belvedere. This is considered the most heavily fortified hotel in the world during this period of time. Something we haven't really talked about Davos yet is just, well, obviously there's a lot of not only business leaders, but world officials too that each come with a crazy security team. There are apparently, I haven't seen this yet, but there are apparently snipers on every single roof. The security is insane.

19:44This whole city is basically on lockdown because the world's most powerful people are here all in one place. But this one hotel seems to be at the center of it all. It has 96 rooms, 30 suites. It hosts everyone from Bill Gates to Bill Clinton, Prince William, Brad Pitt Bono, Matt Damon, Angelina Jolila. If you are in the A tier, you're staying at this particular hotel. And then I don't think it matters how much you're paying for a hot dog. What room are you staying in at that hotel? Because all the movers and shakers are there. Totally. Another fun fact about Steigenberger, I hope we're pronouncing that correctly.

20:16The guests lose access to these standard amenities that you would expect at a nice hotel. They actually drain the swimming pool sometimes for extra space because so many meetings are happening. That meeting space is of the highest importance. That spa is of less importance. So they usually clear out the massage tables and stuff and say, hey, anywhere you see space is a space for meetings. So it's fascinating how this hotel just turns into this networking machine, very secure networking machine without all of the amenities you'd expect of a hotel of its caliber. All right. Final fact about Davos.

20:48Since Davos has started, men have always outnumbered women. And back in 2019, the last data for which we have available, 22 percent of attendees are going to be female, which is low. But also the percentage of women has doubled since 2001. one. And there now is a quota system for large firms. They must bring one woman for every four men. So kind of shows you who is at the upper echelon of business and power in the world. It's still men. And basically just have to look at the gender breakdown at Davos to see that in action. The average age too. I have this stat. I don't know if it's that fun, but it's 54 for men and 49 for women.

21:27So we're bringing that average age down a little bit, Neil. Okay. So we're going to be here all week. Like what should listeners expect from us? They hopefully should expect us to break the news that we usually read about in the same publications that we typically read when we're back in the United States, because Davos does end up making headlines. Trump's speech will make headlines. So we will just be there, listen to it in real time, and then give you that feedback and give you that reporting live from Davos. So we're just kind of cutting out the middleman. We're being the middleman themselves.

21:57We're doing some on the ground reporting. And just so you know, the podcast is going to come out at the exact same time. We just are going to be able to record it. Sleep in a little bit. Sleep in a little bit. Record it at 11 a.m. Davos time, but it will hit your podcast feeds. We'll do the normal show. You're going to get all the business news of the previous day. Nothing is going to change, but we are going to do some interviews with founders for our YouTube channel. And at the same time, we have our social media team here. So we're hoping to put out some interesting content on social media about what we see at Davos, maybe some more fun facts that we find out about this place and remarking on the news.

22:33So definitely check out our Instagram at MB Daily Show if you're interested in seeing what we're up to there. I'm going for the hot dogs. Let's be honest. All right, Toby, before we go, what is one thing that you bought specifically for this trip? Well, I had to dust off some old suits because apparently it's, you know, very business, mostly business casual. But I want to look good. I want to represent Morning Brew Daily pretty well. So I'm rocking a suit every single day, but I only have, you know, one or two suits. I literally found my old high school suit that I still fit into little flex there or not a flex.

23:05I don't know which way, because I just need a couple outfits to wear throughout the week. So I'm going to be suited and booted. Here's a tip. You can just bring one suit and then just bring different like shirt, uh, shoe tie pairs. So you look a little different. No, he's going to remember. You're giving me a lot of credit thinking that I have enough shoes and ties to make my suits look different. I have more of those than they have different. I have one pair of shoes and ties are out, by the way. I'm going a little bit less formal than that. You said you were looking for proper footwear, though.