Davos 2026: the risk premium has appeared on store shelves

This article is available for reading in Trade magazin 2026/02-03

One of the main trade messages from Davos 2026 was that tariffs and trade pressure are increasingly being used as political tools. Just before the event, Donald Trump threatened eight European countries with new tariffs over the Greenland dispute, only to withdraw the package after a meeting with NATO secretary general Mark Rutte.

Live report from the 2026 Annual Meeting in Davos: this year’s forum focused on trade risks and the ‘operational‑level’ management of supply chains

Resilience at the operational level

According to the message of the WEF – Kearney Global Value Chains Outlook 2026, disruptions in supply chains aren’t cyclical deviations, but have become part of the system – therefore, the competitive advantage lies in how well one can reorganise physical flows when there is a problem. The report claims that 74% of corporate executives prioritise resilience investments. In 2025 tariff measures between major economies rearranged more than USD 400bn in trade flows, while disruptions to major shipping routes caused a 40% annual increase in container freight rates. For FMCG chains and manufacturers this boils down to three very specific questions: how much should be buffered, where should capacity be reserved in advance, and what routes can be quickly opened if the usual channel becomes more expensive or narrows. In Davos Andy Jassy, the CEO of Amazon told CNBC that tariffs are starting to “seep into” prices, because previously accumulated stocks have run out.

The World Economic Forum livestreamed more than 200 Davos sessions, and its digital channels have attracted a global audience of several million (4 million on X, 8 million on Facebook, and more than 1 million subscribers on WhatsApp)

AI: gains or noise

AI was given a spectacular business makeover during the Davos week: according to Reuters, large corporate players talked about it in terms of jobs and productivity, while trade unions pointed out that in many places AI is also used to justify layoffs. However, the focus of the debate wasn’t on whether AI would replace humans, but on how to achieve measurable results quickly without it becoming a source of internal conflict. Food @ the Edge was one of the public food innovation sections of the WEF’s Davos programme, where Jasmin Hume, founder and CEO of Shiru spoke about how the traditional development of a new food ingredient typically takes 10-15 years, tens of millions of dollars and a research team of up to 50 people. Shiru uses bioinformatics to screen a huge protein database, by this reducing the number of development rounds.

„On air” in Davos: from the WEF studios and podcast spaces, on‑site discussions and interviews were broadcast in real time to the global audience throughout the forum

ESG: exposure on the map

In Davos ESG became most concrete when it came to managing nature-related exposures. According to the WEF, the Forest Future Alliance aims to accelerate the launch and scaling of forest conservation, restoration and responsible management projects through private sector and philanthropic collaboration. Translated into FMCG language, this means exposure to forest-related raw materials (cocoa, coffee, palm oil) and paper-based packaging: these are areas where due diligence and expectations may quickly become more stringent. In Davos the WEF – McKinsey Global Cooperation Barometer 2026 concluded that cooperation isn’t collapsing, but rather transforming.