Davos (Switzerland) (AFP) – Although the sun may be setting on the era of free trade, crypto supporters say a new dawn is rising for digital currencies thanks to US President Donald Trump. Meanwhile, English football legend David Beckham made his debut at the World Economic Forum, vowing to empower girls as part of his mission to help children around the world. Those were just some of the goings-on in Davos, where the world’s richest and most powerful huddle together for public talks.
Here’s what happened at the forum on Tuesday:
**- Beckham wants to empower girls -** Beckham sprinkled some celebrity stardust at the forum but he had a serious message to the powerful gathered: girls are being left behind. “That’s what I’m focusing on this year, teenage girls, empowering them to live to their full potential. They should have the right and the same access as the boys do,” Beckham said at the forum. “When you empower a young girl, it uplifts them. It uplifts their family. It uplifts their communities. And that’s good for everybody. That’s good for the world.” It was also Beckham’s first attendance at the WEF during which he received a philanthropy award for his work with the children’s charity UNICEF.
**- Multilateralism on the mind -** The WEF is a festival of networking, or so its supporters say: a chance for business and political leaders to have dozens of meetings in a short space of time, far away from the prying eyes of the public and media. But multilateralism’s appeal is waning as global crisis after crisis hits, and now with a more America-first president in the White House, free trade is set to take an even deeper battering than before with commercial tensions on the horizon. Nevertheless, there was one message every leader who spoke could agree on: global cooperation is a good thing, despite Trump. “Protectionism leads nowhere and there are no winners in a trade war,” Chinese Vice Premier Ding Xuexiang said, without mentioning Trump directly. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz vowed to “defend free trade as the basis of our prosperity,” after Trump threatened to impose tariffs and taxes on partners.
**- Crypto’s ‘new dawn’ -** It’s the “dawn of a new day” for cryptocurrencies with Trump’s return, according to Coinbase chief Brian Armstrong, with palpable excitement for the future. “You have to remember that the last four years in the US, it was a very hostile environment,” Armstrong told attendees at one session. Initially opposed to cryptocurrency, Trump made a sharp about-face during his presidential campaign, becoming a champion of the concept and promising to develop the sector, notably by loosening regulations.
**- Activism on show -** There has been a flurry of protests at the gathering since the weekend. In the latest on Tuesday, Greenpeace activists raised a banner saying “Tax the super-rich! Fund a just & green future” in the main hall of the Congress Centre. That came a day after Oxfam activists briefly blocked the access road to the Davos heliport, while a separate group threw green paint on the facade of an Amazon pavilion in the village, holding a sign saying “drop fossil subsidies.”
**- Musk’s ‘lawfare’ -** Germany’s Scholz criticised Elon Musk’s support for “extreme-right positions” after the tech mogul backed Germany’s far-right AfD party. Musk was also on the mind of a senior OpenAI executive who hoped the Tesla chief would stop using legal action to compete with the ChatGPT maker. “We think he’s a strong competitor, but we hope that he won’t keep resorting to … lawfare to compete,” chief financial officer Sarah Friar said on the forum’s sidelines of an event hosted by Bloomberg. Musk had been part of the team that launched OpenAI as a non-profit firm but has since filed legal challenges to stop it changing its structure to for-profit.
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