Surging billionaire wealth a political threat, Oxfam warns as Davos opens

People with masks on Elon Musk, center, and United States Vice President JD Vance, right, attend a demonstration against the United President Donald Trump and the Annual Meeting of the World Economy Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Sunday, Jan. 18, 2026.

The collective wealth of the planet’s billionaires soared to a record level in 2025, charity Oxfam reported Monday, warning of “highly dangerous” political consequences as the global elite gathers for the World Economic Forum.

US President Donald Trump’s policies in particular spurred the fortunes of the ultra-rich, which jumped 16.2 percent in the first year of his second term to $18.3 trillion, the NGO said in a report released each year ahead of the Davos forum.

“Actions of the Trump presidency including the championing of deregulation and undermining agreements to increase corporate taxation have benefited the richest around the world,” Oxfam said.

The world now has more than 3,000 billionaires for the first time, it added, with the top 12 -- led by Tesla and SpaceX chief Elon Musk -- having “more wealth than the poorest half of humanity, or more than four billion people”.

Increasingly this money is buying political power, Oxfam said, pointing in particular to tycoons’ buying newspapers and other media, such as Musk’s takeover of X or the purchase of The Washington Post by Amazon’s Jeff Bezos.

“The widening gap between the rich and the rest is at the same time creating a political deficit that is highly dangerous and unsustainable,” Oxfam’s executive director Amitabh Behar said.

Trump will arrive with one of the biggest US delegations ever for the Davos conference, where he is expected to dominate an agenda officially billed as “A Spirit of Dialogue”.

Davos protests

Trump’s participation galvanised around 300 protesters who arrived in Davos on Sunday, many wearing masks of Musk or US Vice President JD Vance and holding fistfuls of euros.

Nathalie Ruoss of the Swiss Young Socialists told AFP the most powerful people in the world make decisions at Davos that impact everyone.

“And they do it with no democratic legitimacy,” she said, calling it “unacceptable” that the WEF welcomed “fascists like Donald Trump”.

For Oxfam, Washington’s decision to exempt US multinationals from an internationally agreed minimum tax rate of 15 percent was a stark example of ignoring growing inequality.

“In country after country, the super-rich have not only accumulated more wealth than could ever be spent, but have also used this wealth to secure the political power to shape the rules that define our economies and govern nations,” it said.

“Such power gives billionaires a grasp over all our futures, undermining political freedom and eroding the rights of the many.”