Of all the big firms in Silicon Valley, Amazon had the most to lose from Donald Trump's presidency. And lose it did, albeit briefly, its share price dropping 5% shortly after the election. During the campaign, Trump warned that Amazon had a "huge antitrust problem" – a reasonable stance for the populist that he once aspired to be. Most likely, though, his animosity had more to do with the fact Amazon's founder, Jeff Bezos, also owns the Washington Post, an influential newspaper that took an early strong dislike of Trump. By the time of Amazon's massive cloud-computing conference, which kicked off in Las Vegas at the end of November, such squabbles seem to have been forgotten.

In many Western democracies, right-wing populists, energised by self-proclaimed victories over "establishment elites", are doubling down on the claim that globalisation lies at the root of many citizens' problems. For those whose living standards have stagnated or declined in recent decades, even as political leaders have touted free trade and capital flows as the recipe for increased prosperity, the argument holds considerable appeal. So it must be addressed head on. Of course, economic grievances alone do not fuel anti-globalisation sentiment; populism has emerged even in countries with low unemployment and rising incomes. But such grievances provide the kernel of truth that populist leaders need to attract support, which they then attempt to secure with distortions and exaggerations.