By Blake Hounshell

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates—Donald Trump was everywhere and nowhere.

His name came up almost constantly—in side conversations, in pointed questions to panelists, in broadsides from the main stage. And even when the new American president wasn’t invoked by name, his putative threat to world order was very much on people’s minds: Is trade dead? Is globalization over? What does “America First” mean for the rest of us?

Here at the World Government Summit—a sort of Middle Eastern Davos-in-the-making put on by the United Arab Emirates, and the first major international confab since Trump took office—the mood among the 4,000 or so attendees was one of confusion mixed with concern.

Image: Politico