Hamlet without the prince. That, bluntly, is how Davos feels this year.

The usual caravan of business leaders, academics, clerics, journalists and celebs has trekked up into the high Alps for their annual January get-together, but the man everyone is talking about is 3,000 miles away awaiting his inauguration in Washington later this week.

Donald Trump is dominating proceedings. A survey of business executives conducted by PwC showed that companies are worried by Donald Trump’s protectionist rhetoric. Predictably, the concerns are strongest in the US and Mexico given what the president-elect has said about building a wall along the Rio Grande.

Trump’s influence can also be felt in other ways. The manner in which he won the US election, tapping in to deep-seated anger about the unfair distribution of the spoils of economic growth, has been noted. There is talk in Davos of the need to ensure that globalisation works for everyone.

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This is not new. Klaus Schwab, the man who founded the World Economic Forum in the early 1970s, warned as long ago as 1996 that globalisation had entered a critical phase. “A mounting backlash against its effects, especially in the industrial democracies, is threatening a very disruptive impact on economic activity and social stability in many countries,” he said.

Schwab’s warning was not heeded. There was no real attempt to make globalisation work for everyone. Communities affected by the export of jobs to countries where labour was cheaper were left to rot. The rewards of growth went disproportionately to a privileged few. Resentment quietly festered until there was a backlash. For Schwab, Brexit and Trump are a bitter blow, a repudiation of what he likes to call the spirit of Davos.

It would be wrong, however, to imagine that business is terrified at the prospect of a Trump presidency. Boardrooms rather like the idea of a big cut in US corporation tax. They favour deregulation. They purr at plans to spend more on infrastructure. Wall Street is happy because it thinks the new president will mean stronger growth and higher corporate earnings.

In Trump’s absence, it has been left to two senior members of the outgoing Obama administration – his vice-president, Joe Biden, and secretary of state John Kerry – to fly the US flag. Just as significantly, Xi Jinping is the first Chinese president to attend Davos and has made it clear that, unlike Trump, he has no plans to resile from international obligations. The sense of a changing of the guard is palpable.