1/ Views from the Davos mountain top: Is President Trump a China Hawk?

2/ I am at Davos this week for the Nth time. As Klaus Schwab, the founder of the @wef, noted at a session this afternoon, I’ve been coming for more than four decades. Klaus is a graduate of the Littauer program that grew into HKS. And he’s happy to be counted as an alumnus of

3/ Opening the session today, Klaus noted that there are many reasons for pessimism. At his meeting with the young Global Leaders this morning, he had asked them whether they thought the next quarter century would be better, or alternatively worse, than the past 25 years. Half

4/ Responding to Klaus’ call for “constructive optimism” at the luncheon session today, I confessed that I’m cautiously optimistic about the most important bilateral relationship in the world. To put the point provocatively, I suggested we all ask: Is President Trump a China

5/ That’s the title of an article that I’ve been working on for some time and that will be published next week. Begin with Peter Thiel’s advice not to take Trump literally— but instead, to take him seriously.

6/ Read what he said at rallies and in tweets over the course of the election. Watch how he expressed himself at the campaign events. Yes, he is an actor in what he sees as political theater. Yes, he speaks in hyperbole. Yes, he “weaves”—his word—his lines from a combination of

7/ But as the results of November 5th demonstrate, he communicates to his target audiences. And whatever else he is, or is not, he is a phenomenon. He has done something most experts declared impossible—something that had never been done before in the 249 years of America’s

8/ Most of the Davos men and women, especially European sophisticates, are like most of my faculty colleagues at Harvard: stuck somewhere between disbelief and denial in the 7 stages of grief. But I’ll be advising them to get real. Trump is now the President of the US and the