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Pray that President Trump would be able to protect our national interests while having good relations with our neighbors around the world.

Donald Trump was everywhere and nowhere.

His name came up almost constantlyā€”in side conversations, in pointed questions to panelists, in broadsides from the main stage. And even when the new American president wasnā€™t invoked by name, his putative threat to world order was very much on peopleā€™s minds: Is trade dead? Is globalization over? What does ā€œAmerica Firstā€ mean for the rest of us?

Here at the World Government Summitā€”a sort of Middle Eastern Davos-in-the-making put on by the United Arab Emirates, and the first major international confab since Trump took officeā€”the mood among the 4,000 or so attendees was one of confusion mixed with concern.

After all, this was a gathering of precisely the kind of cosmopolitan elites Trump ran against on the campaign trail, and has vowed to disempower as president.

If thereā€™s anyone who embodies the idea of globalism, itā€™s Klaus Schwab, founder of the Switzerland-based World Economic Forum, who opened the conference with a grim assessment of the populist wave led by Trump. ā€œPeople in some parts of the world are angry. Facts do not anymore count. Fake news may become more important than reality,ā€ he said.

Schwab, whose organization has come to symbolize the idea of a borderless world that Trump rails against, also offered something of an apology. ā€œWe should not go back to neoliberalism, and say we want to fix the system by making it more inclusive,ā€ he declared. ā€œWhat we have seen is a revolution against the system, so fixing the system is not enough.ā€

ā€œWe should not look at globalism and nationalism as enemies. We are a global society with a shared future,ā€ he said. ā€œAt the same time, we need a national identity.ā€

But like others struggling to understand Trumpism, Schwab offered more in the way of slogans than answers, and proceeded to plug his most recent bookā€”The Fourth Industrial Revolution, a techno-optimist look at advances like artificial intelligence, genome editing and cryptographyā€”when in all likelihood the acceleration of existing technological trends is only going to widen those divides and create more Trumps. (ā€œWe need to move out from this negativism,ā€ Schwab said, ā€œand move to a place where we again have trust in the future.ā€)

Christine Lagarde, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, faced a barrage of questions about Trump, and while she deflected themā€”the IMF is optimistic about his tax reform and infrastructure plans, she revealedā€”she also grappled with elitesā€™ failure to anticipate the populist backlash that Trump represents.

ā€œWeā€™ve been saying internationalization is great, global trade is great,ā€ Lagarde acknowledged. ā€œBut we havenā€™t been so focused on sharing the benefits.ā€ Asked why she and others missed the Trump phenomenon, she said: ā€œBecause it was insidious. Because it happened over time.ā€

How might globalizationā€™s defenders retool? ā€œI know itā€™s not fashionable at the moment, but I think facts, figures,ā€ she said, in another unmistakable shot at Trump and his penchant for misrepresenting reality. (ā€œWe are facing a real challenge,ā€ the left-leaning economist Joseph Stiglitz added during a later session, ā€œundermining the common agreement of what is truth.ā€)

The hits on Trump kept coming, as did the mea culpas from the globalists.

ā€œGlobalization has brought increasing wealth and improved welfare in general, but it also had its losses,ā€ said U.N. Secretary-General AntĆ³nio Guterres. ā€œMany people feel that they have been left behind, and that the political establishments of their countries have not taken care of them.ā€

As for Trump, who has threatened to slash the U.N.ā€™s funding and shown little appreciation for its value, Guterres said: ā€œMy position about the way the United Nations needs to deal with the U.S. administration is simple: Respect its principles.ā€

Guterres suffered his first black eye at the hands of the Trump administration this week when U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley blocked the appointment of former Palestinian prime minister Salam Fayyad as envoy to Libya, but he held his rhetorical ground, at least. ā€œI deeply regret this opposition and I see no validity in it,ā€ he said.

Using the kind of language usually applied to problems like terrorism, Jim Yong Kim, the World Bank chief appointed by Barack Obama, suggested that global institutions had a responsibility to address the anger that led to Trump. ā€œItā€™s not enough to condemn xenophobia and populism; we need to engage with the root causes that make them fester.ā€

It was ironic to watch all this globalist soul-searching on display in Dubai, a city that has benefited from globalization perhaps more than any otherā€”importing labor from all over the world and positioning itself as a symbol of openness in the closed-off Middle East, and a gateway between East and West.

Gulf Arab leaders openly cheered the departure of Obama, whose dealings with Iran and embrace of the Arab Spring both infuriated and alarmed them. Now, theyā€™re trying to figure out what to make of Trump, whose promises to get tough on Tehran and attacks on Islamist groups like the Muslim Brotherhood have undeniable appeal here.

They may have to keep guessing for now. Last year, Obama gave the WGS keynote address via video, but the Trump administration sent nobody to this yearā€™s conference to explain its positionsā€”perhaps understandable given all the chaos back at the White House, but an unmistakable sign of its insularity nonetheless.

The UAE (which, through the U.N. Foundation, paid for my travel and lodging here) was the only Arab country to defend Trumpā€™s executive order on immigration, rejecting the idea that it was a ā€œMuslim ban,ā€ and its ambassador in Washington has cozied up to top White House officials including Jared Kushner. But this is realpolitik, not love. When asked about dealing with Trump, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, Dubaiā€™s absolute ruler and the UAEā€™s vice president, was characteristically unsentimental. ā€œWe have relationships with governments and states, not individuals,ā€ he said. ā€œOur relations are based on the interests of our country.ā€

Privately, some will admit to worrying that Trump will unleash a global trade war that will make everyone worse off. An Emirati close to the royal family told me that the official stiff upper lip masked real concern: ā€œIf globalization dries up, Dubai is finished.ā€

For now, the world goes onā€”and much of the conference had nothing to do with America or Trump whatsoever. There were booths on blockchain technology and the UAEā€™s plans to visit Mars, and a ā€œMuseum of the Futureā€ showcasing sci-fi technologies like robotic gardens and a jellyfish-mangrove hybrid that could generate fresh water. The prime minister of Bhutan flitted from panel to panel, promoting the idea of ā€œgross national happinessā€ as a better barometer of a countryā€™s well-being than GDP.

Parag Khanna, a Singapore-based author and proud globalist who gave a talk here on ā€œliquid borders,ā€ laughed at the idea that Trump can roll back globalization, as many here fear. Pointing to reams of statistics showing the explosion of new trade ties with little or no involvement from the United States, he told me that Trump would merely act as an ā€œaccelerantā€ of existing trends. As for the U.S., ā€œAmerica Firstā€ or no, ā€œpeople will care a lot less about what we do,ā€ he predicted.

Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem, the head of DP World, a UAE-based ports conglomerate that operates in 40 countries, also disputed the assumption that Trump threatens global trade, noting that some 75 percent of the worldā€™s economic growth is in emerging markets. Sulayem has his business down to a scienceā€”he rattled off statistics, such as how 1 percent growth in a country means a 3 percent growth in shipping containers. His company is focused on cracking open markets in hard-to-reach places like the interior of Africa, and doesnā€™t much worry about what the United States is doing.

As for Trump and his populist allies in Europe and around the world, ā€œI think this is a phase,ā€ he said. ā€œThis is something that will pass.ā€ (Contributor: By Blake Hounshell for Politico – Blake Hounshell is the editor in chief of POLITICO Magazine.

ā€œIf any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you.ā€ (James 1:5)

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