Opinion | After Davos, the search begins for what comes after the post-Cold War order

Europe’s political and business elite arrived at the World Economic Forum in Davos this year with nerves already frayed after a bruising first year of US President Donald Trump’s second term. That period was defined by the imposition of a protectionist tariff strategy to gain economic and geopolitical leverage, an often combative approach to the war in Ukraine and renewed doubts over Nato security guarantees.

In the run-up to Davos, the White House threatened eight European countries – including the UK, Germany and Denmark – with tariffs of 10 to 25 per cent unless they supported the administration’s ambitions to control Greenland. The move turned a grinding war, a long-running trade dispute and a revived Arctic land grab into a single, combustible test of transatlantic economic and security solidarity.

At the outset, US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick outlined the Trump administration’s position and the reason for attending Davos. He claimed that years of globalisation had failed, leaving American workers behind. Lutnick challenged Europe’s net zero ambitions, arguing that they would increase dependence on China. He also said that any economic dependence should be limited to close allies. That message, however, sat uneasily alongside the administration’s increasingly combative treatment of strategic partners and allies.

However, the event that defined the World Economic Forum was Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s address. He delivered what could be the most consequential address by a Western leader in years, outlining the end of the post-Cold War rules-based order and what might replace it.

The former governor of the Bank of England and the Bank of Canada noted that the world has entered a distinct new phase, one in which trade, finance and supply chains are openly deployed as instruments of power and coercion. In this phase, international rules are applied much less consistently than before.