Surrounded by billionaires in Davos, Trump intends to show Americans how he will make housing more affordable

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump plans to use a keynote speech Wednesday to try to convince Americans that he can make housing more affordable, but he chose an odd backdrop for the speech: a Swiss mountain town where vacation ski chalets cost $4.4 million.

On the anniversary of his inauguration, Trump will travel to the World Economic Forum in Davos — an annual gathering of the global elite — where he may meet many of the billionaires he has surrounded himself with during his first year in the White House.

Read more: The elite World Economic Forum is set to open in Davos with the pro-business and rising inequality Trump in attendance

Trump had focused his election campaign on reducing the cost of living, and portrayed himself as a populist while serving French fries at McDonald’s. But in office, his public schedules suggest he traded the golden arches for a golden age, devoting more time to chatting with the wealthy than speaking directly to his working-class base.

“At the end of the day, it’s the investors and billionaires in Davos who get his attention, not the families struggling to pay their bills,” said Alex Jaquez, head of policy and advocacy at the liberal think tank Groundwork Collaborative.

Trump’s attention in his first year was less on financial issues and more focused on foreign policy regarding the conflicts in Gaza, Ukraine and Venezuela. He is now determined to seize Greenland, much to the chagrin of European allies – a title that is likely to dominate his time in Davos, and overshadow his housing ideas.

Trump noted the Europeans’ resistance, telling reporters on Monday evening: “Let’s put it this way: Davos is going to be very interesting.”

The White House has tried to shift Trump’s focus to affordability issues, responding to warning signs in opinion polls in a year when control of Congress is at stake in the midterm elections.

About six in 10 American adults now say Trump has hurt the cost of living, according to the latest poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. It’s a problem even among Republicans, who say Trump’s work on the economy has fallen short of their expectations. Just 16% say Trump helped “a lot” in making things more affordable, down from 49% in April 2024, when an AP-NORC poll asked Americans the same question about his first term.

The president is counting on investment commitments from billionaires and foreign countries to create a jobs boom, even as his broad tariffs have squeezed the labor market and stimulated inflation. Trump supporters who attend his rallies — which the president resumed last month — are left confident that Trump’s business relationships can ultimately help them.

This strategy entails political risks. Frank Luntz, a Republican pollster and strategist, said voters are more interested in the economy in their lives than in Trump’s relationships with billionaires.

“If you ask me: Are billionaires very popular?” “The answer is no — and hasn’t been for some time,” said Luntz, who last year identified “affordability” as a defining issue for voters.

Appealing to billionaires instead of the working class

Since Trump’s first term in 2017, the richest 0.1% of Americans have seen their wealth increase by $11.98 trillion to $23.46 trillion, according to the Federal Reserve.

The size of these gains exceeds what the bottom 50% of families – the majority of the country – received during the same period. Their net worth rose by $2.94 trillion, nearly a quarter of what the richest 0.1% earned.

One of the biggest concerns for voters is the cost of housing. In recent weeks, Trump has floated proposals such as lowering interest rates on home loans by purchasing $200 billion in mortgage debt and barring major financial companies from buying homes. However, these efforts will do little to address the housing market’s underlying problem: a multi-year deficit in housing construction and housing prices that have generally risen more quickly than wages.

Trump regularly points to investments made by the rich and powerful as signs of coming economic growth. To encourage billionaires to achieve, Trump in his first year pursued policies on artificial intelligence and financial regulation that could benefit the wealthy, along with tax cuts, limiting IRS enforcement, and reducing regulatory burdens on large-scale investments.

“Most billionaires do not share the interests of the working class,” said Darrell West, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who has written about the “wealth” of American politics. “The wealthy like tax cuts and deregulation, and these preferences make it difficult for the government to provide the assistance that working-class people want.”

Trump is trying to sell tax breaks on tips and overtime pay from what’s known as “one big nice bill” as good for workers. But an analysis by the Congressional Budget Office indicated that middle-class families would have $800 to $1,200 in savings per year on average, while the top 10% of earners would receive $13,600. A separate analysis by the Tax Policy Center, a think tank, said those earning more than $1 million will save an average of $66,510 this year.

The company Trump keeps

Trump regularly holds public events with the rich and powerful in the White House and beyond. He traveled to the Middle East and Asia with billionaires, where foreign countries announced investment commitments and promised that money would flow into middle-class factory jobs.

At a September dinner with tech billionaires, Trump said it was an honor to be surrounded by the likes of Bill Gates, Tim Cook, Sergey Brin and Mark Zuckerberg.

“There has never been anything like it,” Trump said. “The smartest people are gathered around this table. It’s definitely a high IQ group and I’m very proud of them.”

The White House said that the previous Biden administration alienated the business community at the expense of the economy. White House spokesman Khush Desai said, “President Trump’s pro-growth policies and friendly relations with industry giants, on the other hand, secure trillions of dollars in investments that create jobs and opportunities for ordinary Americans.”

Last month, Trump celebrated a $6.25 billion charitable contribution to Trump Children’s investment accounts by Michael Dell. It was an opportunity to talk about economic inequality, but it was also another opportunity for Trump to showcase his relationship with billionaires.

Trump takes phone calls from billionaires and CEOs to chat about business, politics and interests like the planned ballroom in the White House. He regularly peppers his speeches with tributes to Nvidia founder Jensen Huang, whose net worth was estimated by Forbes magazine at $162 billion as of Sunday.

He has installed billionaires in his inner circle like Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick (net worth: $3.3 billion) and special envoy Steve Witkoff (net worth: $2 billion). Elon Musk (net worth: $780 billion) was put in charge of cutting government payrolls before dramatic disagreements and, later, public reconciliation.

White House press secretary Carolyn Leavitt, at a news conference last month, portrayed Trump’s billionaire status as a positive for voters.

“I think that’s one of the many reasons they re-elected him back to this position, because he’s a businessman who understands the economy and knows how to fix it,” she said.