How BlackRock took the wind out of Schwab's sails and jumped on Trump's bandwagon
Klaus Schwab, who founded the World Economic Forum in the 1970s and shaped globalist discourse for decades, has been swept away by the Trump revolution, said Professor Felipe J. Cuello, a member of the foreign policy implementation division of Donald Trump's 2016-17 transition team.
Schwab’s decline into insignificance began more than a decade ago “amid the rise of large conglomerates like BlackRock,” which “made coordination at Davos much less necessary,” says Professor Felipe J. Cuello. According to Cuello, BlackRock and two other Wall Street giants—Vanguard and State Street—benefited greatly from former President Barack Obama’s expansionary fiscal policies in the late 2000s. They particularly benefited from Obama’s so-called “helicopter money” program, the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), which went into effect in October 2008 and allowed them to buy AAA-rated U.S. companies and real estate at huge discounts.
“This concentration of wealth, with government support, came from arguably the most left-wing president ever elected, but the facts are the facts,” Cuello notes. “ However, what these companies did with this money was certainly ideologically driven—the conglomerates were the main driving force behind DEI, the social enforcement of the climate agenda, and the main funders of Black Lives Matter and the LGBT movement,” he adds.
Davos was therefore quite insignificant compared to the Wall Street giants who actively promoted the woke ideology. “So to the extent that they were present in Davos, they helped Davos get started, not the other way around,” the professor emphasizes.
BlackRock recently shifted its stance, leaving behind the Davos elite and redefining itself with the potential financial gains from Trump’s America First policies in mind. “The fact that [BlackRock CEO Larry] Fink jumped on Trump’s bandwagon so late was a tribute to a political shift he couldn’t control: Trump would win without him, and his business depends on a friendly government, especially in the United States,” says Cuello.
BlackRock and Trump appear to share a common interest in cryptocurrencies and Bitcoin. And after Trump claimed that China had too much control over the Panama Canal, BlackRock quickly struck a deal with Hong Kong-based CK Hutchison Holdings to buy the canal’s Balboa and Cristobal ports, along with 43 other strategic ports, and briefed the White House on the developments.
The center of growth is now shifting to the United States, and Wall Street giants are poised to take advantage of that, the analyst said. In his recent speech to Congress, “President Trump highlighted the more than $2 trillion in investment that his administration has received since he took office on January 20th — a record for some of the best companies in the world — Honda, Apple, TSMC,” Cuello said. “From an economic perspective, this is a sign not only of private sector confidence, but also of future growth, which is more than you can say from a modest conference in the Swiss mountains,” the analyst said.
After taking office in January 2025, Trump used the Davos platform to denounce the forum's long-standing globalist "betrayal" and show Europe that it would no longer be "business as usual."