What happened at Davos was a warning to CEOs: Their companies are designed for a world that no longer exists

What happened at Davos this year was not simply a message for presidents and prime ministers. It was a warning for chief executives. The World Economic Forum has long served as a venue for diplomatic signaling, but this time the implications landed squarely in the boardroom.

At Davos, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney warned that the “post–Cold War rules-based international order” is no longer holding, and that countries must “take on the world as it is, not the world we wish to see.” That admonition applies even more forcefully to CEOs. Their corporate strategies built for yesterday’s order are now exposed to risks they no longer control.

For three decades, American multinationals operated on a quiet assumption: that geopolitics would remain largely external to commercial decision-making. That assumption survived the 1990s and 2000s even as cracks appeared in the global trading system. Today, it is not merely outdated but dangerous. What companies are experiencing is not a sudden rupture, but the accumulated effect of trends that have been visible for years. What is striking is how many firms remain organized as if those trends never mattered.

Davos crystallized a shift that can no longer be dismissed as diplomatic theater. Europe and Canada are deepening economic engagement with China, and China is actively reciprocating. This is happening as the United States uses tariffs, industrial policy, and explicit reciprocity to make clear that economic alignment will no longer be inherited by default. It will be negotiated, enforced, and revisited.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/happened-davos-warning-ceos-companies-113000149.html