‘Trump is a REVOLUTION’ Nobel Prize-winner warns of changes in society ahead of Davos

Economist Robert Shiller said he was concerned about the changes, which are being hailed as success stories by the president.

Speaking ahead of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, where Mr Trump will be a key attraction, Prof Shiller said: “Trump is a revolution, unfortunately, and one who’s reaffirming nationalism and he’s showing that Americans are no better than anyone else.

“It’s troublesome to me. I’m concerned.

“So far we’ve got through a year of him and we’re optimistic that Congress will switch to a democratic majority in another year so he might be defanged.” 

WEF brings world leaders and other politicians, as well as private and public enterprises together to tackle to the world’s most pressing problems such as climate change, inequality and poverty.

But these are not areas Mr Trump’s anti-globalisation “America First” policy has touched upon much in his first year in power.

Mr Trump has also been critical of the elitism that Davos, with the rich and powerful in attendance, represents.Prof Shiller said the president’s reception in the Swiss mountains will be interesting.

He said: “He’s coming to Davos this year and he’s going to try out his rhetoric on the least sympathetic audience I can imagine. 

“He likes sympathetic audiences so I don’t know how he’s going to manage this one.”

The Yale university economic expert said the 2018 theme for WEF – “creative a shared future in a fractured world” – reflected “the problems of the international growth of populism and nationalism, racism and religionism that is quite striking right now”.He said: “Those fractures are re-assertions of traditional fractures and so it’s like we’re back to history again. 

“We were in a period of enlightenment following the horrors of World War 2 and now the people who remembered that are disappearing so we’re going to go back and make the same mistakes.”