Markets may have rallied on Donald Trump’s potential trade “deal” with China, but the corporate world isn’t buying it. That’s one of the key points I took away from several days spent last week at a summit for global chief executives. They were busy preparing for a new world order that many believe will involve a stand-off not between two countries (the US and China) but between three systems — liberal democracy and free markets, state-run capitalism and cyber-libertarianism.
Call the trio the Washington consensus, the Beijing consensus and what I will dub the Zuckerberg consensus after the Facebook founder. Corporate leaders know the first is under threat, and that much of the world blames big business for its demise. They agree that they must help come up with a more inclusive form of free-market capitalism if they want their way of life to survive.
I heard more talk of “investing in human capital” and “prioritising sustainable markets” in the first hour of the AT Kearney-sponsored gathering than I had at any such shindig in recent memory. However, it’s hard to take the latter promise too seriously at a conference held at a luxury resort in Spain, where the record heat was uncomfortably juxtaposed with the amount of CO2 emissions that must have been required for participants’ travel.