Behind the scenes of the IMF-World Bank Annual Meetings as leaders adjust to a new normal of uncertainty
As financial leaders descended upon Washington, DC, for the annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank, IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva issued them some bleak advice: “Don’t get too comfortable.”
Georgieva’s warning came as the global economy continued to prove resilient against global shocks ranging from the United States’ tariff-rate changes to an artificial-intelligence investment boom that many believe is a bubble at risk of bursting. And while the global economy has done better than many feared, risks still linger. As Georgieva put it: “Uncertainty is the new normal, and it is here to stay.” An example of that played out just days before the annual meetings, when US President Donald Trump threatened to impose 100 percent tariffs on Chinese goods, but backtracked shortly after.
We sent our experts to the IMF and World Bank headquarters to sort through all the uncertainty and glean a sense of what may lie ahead for the global economy—and what policymakers should do about it. Below are their insights, in addition to highlights from our own conversations with economic leaders about how they plan to navigate tumultuous times.
This week’s expert contributors
THE LATEST
The world must be open and honest about the benefits of the Bretton Woods system
Unease, uncertainty, and a struggle for direction
Megan Greene: It could be time to ‘slow down’ the Bank of England’s rate-cutting cycle
The World Bank’s Christine Qiang on AI infrastructure
A grim picture for global public debt, but the IMF and World Bank are here to help
The World Bank’s Boubacar Bocoum on value creation for local industries
What lies ahead on day five of the IMF-World Bank annual meetings
Dispatch from Washington: Is this the calm before the economic storm?
October 17 | 5:42 PM ET
The world must be open and honest about the benefits of the Bretton Woods system
We’ve come to the end of another IMF World Bank Week at the Atlantic Council, concluding seventy events here. We’ve started with the beginning at the IMF on all the themes coming into these meetings, and it’s so different than what we were with when we first came here six months ago, ten days after Liberation Day. I wanted to take a moment, as we sit here and reflect back on everything we heard from the finance ministers, the central bank governors, our analysts, our experts, our team, and try to take it in and understand what’s happened.
Because in the day-to-day flow of IMF WEO reports and upgrades and downgrades and inflation and back and forth on Argentina and everything that’s flying on US and China and the trade wars and rare earths, I think we’re losing sight of what’s actually happening in the global economy. It’s the difference between an earthquake and a series of fractures. Six months ago, at the spring meetings, was an earthquake. US President Donald Trump shook the global economy with Liberation Day, and the question facing these ministers, these governors, and the people they represent was whether the global economy would ever be the same, and whether we were going back to a pre-Bretton Woods system, a time where these institutions didn’t exist.
And then six months passed, and Liberation Day tariffs paused, and some came back and some didn’t and some deals were struck, and so we came into these meetings, these annual meetings, with everyone mistakenly breathing a sigh of relief because they thought that things had changed and reverted to status quo.
But think about where we are. The effective tariff rate in the United States is 17 percent. It started at 2.5 percent in January. We got back to the Liberation Day level, but we got there slowly. So each of these things that’s happened over the past six months, what’s happened on tariffs, what’s happened on central bank independence, growing debt problems (we’re in a government shutdown here in Washington), all of them are fractures.
No single one is an earthquake, but in totality, it adds up to the same thing. And the difference of how these ministers reacted this week versus six months ago is night and day because they want, understandably, for things to be as they were and no one wants to speak the hard truths that things are changing fundamentally. They are not going back to the way things were, and everyone has to confront that openly and honestly, because if we don’t speak those hard truths, they are going to rear their heads in a painful way, one way or the other.
The crunch points are coming. A year from now, we’ll be in Thailand. The IMF will have to revisit its quota process, and there’s no room for compromise right now between the United States, Europe, India, China, and the world’s other large economies. The issues are building around the world, not just on trade and tariffs: on debt, on AI, on job loss, all of these issues are what the ministers talk about quietly and privately but don’t want to address openly because there are no good answers. There’s no good explanations for how the global economy has shifted, but there is a fundamental truth that is hard to reconcile with.
Henry Morgenthau, when he addressed the Brent Woods conference at the opening of that conference in 1944, said we have to be partners, not bargainers. But let’s face it, the United States wants to bargain and deal with every other country in the world bilaterally, and that is not why these institutions were created in the first place. They were created on the premise that if we operated collaboratively, not bilaterally but multilaterally, we would deliver better results for the people in our own countries and the world.
And we all know that that system was imperfect over eight years, but if we break down to a simple bargaining premise of might-makes-right economic leverage over one country can be exercised, we might not like what we find back in the United States. That was the lesson this week with China and its rare earth decision. Opening this up will have cost, and there’s a reason the system was built in the first place.
I think the rest of the world has to be open and honest about the benefits of that system. No one seems to want to defend it. Everyone wants to say what’s wrong about it, and there certainly are things that are wrong. No one wants to say that multilateralism is a good thing, that international cooperation is a good thing, that not bullying your friends and allies is a good thing, but these are truths.
These are truths we’ve always known in this country—that central bank independence is a good thing and leads to more prosperity. This is fundamental to what makes a strong economy and what makes a healthy society. And we cannot separate out, as the ministers and governors would like to do, our geopolitics and our economic policy. There are National Guard troops outside this building all week. You don’t hear that anywhere in this building throughout the week. We have a government shutdown. We have a situation going on around the world. We have flare-ups all over, but those are not issues the ministers want to confront because it’s not core to what they see as the immediate objective, which is stability, but stability for stability’s sake, while technology is changing rapidly and the shifts are happening all around us, will ultimately lead to instability.
So our work here, our goal at the Atlantic Council, is to tell the hard truths that are sometimes difficult to tell. This is the role of these institutions, and we will play a constructive role in doing it.
The one thing about macroeconomics and data is that the numbers usually don’t lie. Now, there’s questions about that, and we’ve debated some of them here, but we need to put the data out there and let the facts speak for themselves. We need to be transparent about our economies. We need to show what’s actually happening around the world, and only then can we have an honest conversation about the tectonic shifts that are happening in the global economy and how every country has to adapt to this new reality and stand by their values and stand by the process and stand by the system that has led to the prosperity that has brought us to this prolonged period of global peace unseen any time before in history.
October 17 | 4:26 PM ET
Unease, uncertainty, and a struggle for direction
This year’s IMF-World Bank Annual Meetings reflected profound unease about a shifting global economic order and uncertainty over the roles of the two multilateral institutions.
Discussions took place amid continuing trade tensions and a stark divergence in the direction of the world’s major economies.
The United States is placing its chips on the rapid buildup of artificial intelligence (AI) and digital finance, with AI-driven capital investment now overshadowing slowing activity in other sectors. China continues to rely on manufacturing exports, masking weaknesses in the domestic economy. European growth is recovering slowly while it faces the dual challenge of maintaining its open-market model and financing a defense buildup in response to Russian aggression. Meanwhile, public debt keeps increasing, and concerns about government bond markets is creating a bit of unrest in financial markets.
Delegates from smaller countries surely used the meetings to point to the resulting spillovers. Apart from the general exhortations to mutual cooperation, however, there were no tangible takeaways in the concluding documents coming out of the meetings.
A US call to get back to basics
Yet, delegates walked away with one bit of clarity. After dreading a possible US withdrawal during the spring meetings, delegates now got a clearer idea of the priorities of the Bretton Woods institutions’ major shareholder. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent repeated his pointed call for the IMF and World Bank to return to their core mandates: that is, helping countries strengthen their private sector growth and maintain macroeconomic and financial stability.
The World Bank translated this impetus into an elegant shift toward a “jobs, jobs, jobs” agenda, refocusing its existing private sector work to deliver more immediate benefits for developing countries. The IMF, by contrast, looked as though it lacked a clear north star—guarded in tone, generic in its advice, and preoccupied with avoiding friction with major shareholders. In the face of “Knightian uncertainty,” even its highly valued World Economic Outlook forecasts have a shorter half-life than usual.
A risky bet on Argentina
And there was Argentina, of course, an evergreen topic for annual meeting conversations. The unprecedented US intervention in favor of the Argentine peso carries exceptional risks, both for the reputation of the US Treasury and the IMF, which could be asked to discreetly provide the funds for Argentina to repay the United States and, less discreetly, may get stuck with the blame for a failed adjustment program in the first place. Much is therefore at stake in Argentina’s midterm elections, which may or may not deliver the intended boost for the president’s reform program.
What comes next
For the World Bank, success will rest on the successful execution of its jobs agenda. It may find partners in the developing world more willing to engage this time. Zambia’s President Hakainde Hichilema, for example, neatly summed up how his country hopes to boost domestic activity in the face of declining foreign aid. “Seek ye [own] growth” is his mantra, an effort which the World Bank will no doubt gladly assist.
On the IMF’s side, discussions on quota and governance reform remain gridlocked, with major shareholders seemingly uninterested in meaningful changes. However, the forthcoming Article IV consultations with the United States and China will be a chance for the institution to redeem its reputation as a credible and impartial assessor of its members’ economic policies and their spillovers.
And by the annual meetings in Thailand next year, the then-completed surveillance and conditionality reviews will provide a clearer picture of how the institution will reinterpret the mandate of its core activities—economic surveillance and program lending.
October 17 | 1:52 PM ET
Megan Greene: It could be time to ‘slow down’ the Bank of England’s rate-cutting cycle
October 17 | 1:31 PM ET
Concerns over debt dominate the annual meetings once again—but this time, it’s major economies keeping officials up at night
It should come as no surprise that debt is dominating the conversations at this week’s annual meetings. The IMF has been clear in raising the alarms around the current dangerous trajectory, with global public debt set to hit 100 percent of global gross domestic product (GDP) before the end of the decade.
Reining in unsustainable debt-to-GDP ratios is always a key piece of IMF surveillance work and countries use this convening in Washington to show the Fund—and private investors—why their markets are stronger than they might appear on paper. But what’s different this time around is which part of the economy is causing the most concern. It’s not the typical emerging markets that are keeping the IMF up at night. In the Fiscal Monitor it released this week, the IMF flagged Italy, France, Canada, and of course, the United States as having rising debt risk and warned that this financial turmoil (perhaps exacerbated by political dysfunction in some countries) could spiral into a “doom loop.”
The interesting thing to me is how often I heard a similar concern raised privately by emerging market finance ministers and central bank governors. In the series of meetings we held this week, debt came up again and again, with these countries’ officials concerned about the United States and Europe. It’s a strange and concerning twist on the usual way debt plays out through the IMF and World Bank meetings, and perhaps a signal of what finance officials fear could end up being a problem which, like the global financial crisis, starts in advanced economies but doesn’t end there.
October 17 | 12:28 PM ET
The World Bank’s Christine Qiang on AI infrastructure
Frank Willey, assistant director at the Global Energy Center, speaks with Christine Qiang, the World Bank’s director of digital foundations, about how the World Bank and other international financial institutions support the global adoption of artificial intelligence.
October 17 | 11:01 AM ET
A grim picture for global public debt, but the IMF and World Bank are here to help
It used to be a running joke that the IMF stands for “It’s Mostly Fiscal.” And indeed, before the global economy was hit by a series of major shocks, that was the case—the IMF placed strong emphasis on its fiscal policy advice.
This year’s annual meetings are bringing that focus back. The IMF’s latest Fiscal Monitor, released on Wednesday, presents a sobering picture: global public debt is expected to reach 100 percent of global GDP—the highest level since 1948, when the world was rebuilding after the devastation of World War II.
Today, 3.4 billion people—about 40 percent of the world’s population—live in countries where governments spend more on debt servicing (interest payments) than on either education or healthcare. The main drivers of rising government expenditures are increased defense spending, aging populations, and high borrowing costs.
With scarce resources, spending efficiency becomes critical. Governments must rethink how to use public money smarter—through enhanced public finance management, strong debt management frameworks, credible medium-term fiscal rules, and greater transparency. As always, both the IMF, through its capacity development and Article IV policy advice, and the World Bank, through its development assistance, stand ready to help. Policymakers should make full use of these tools and focus on achieving fiscal sustainability for this and future generations.
After all, no one wants to live in a world where interest payments occupy the top line of the national budget.
October 17 | 10:54 AM ET
The World Bank’s Boubacar Bocoum on value creation for local industries
Alexis Harmon, assistant director at the Global Energy Center, is joined by Boubacar Bocoum, lead mining specialist at the World Bank.
October 17 | 10:49 AM ET
Turkish Central Bank Governor Fatih Karahan warns that the digital lira should be designed carefully—or else risk financial stability
October 17 | 9:03 AM ET
What lies ahead on day five of the IMF-World Bank annual meetings
LIVE NOW | #ACDailyBrief: Join @JulietteMatos_ and @ACGeoEcon’s Sophia Busch for what’s ahead on Day 5 of the @WorldBank and @IMFNews #AnnualMeetings https://t.co/1qjDf3qToz
— Atlantic Council (@AtlanticCouncil) October 17, 2025
October 17 | 7:00 AM ET
Dispatch from Washington: Is this the calm before the economic storm?
When the world’s finance ministers and central bank governors roll into town for the annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, it’s a good time to take the measure of the global economic mood. The best way to view this week’s gathering is through a split screen of relief and anxiety.
Despite spiraling global debt, US-generated trade frictions, and stubborn inflationary pressures, global growth has held up far better than most feared when the same group met in April. The IMF this week raised its 2025 global growth forecast to 3.2 percent, up from 2.8 percent in April, as the world economy thus far has shrugged off worst-case scenarios of runaway tariffs and cascading financial shocks.
Yet that relief comes with an anxious edge: Momentary stability seems less durable in a world threatening to break into fragments, as global trade growth of 2.4 percent (and declining) is running behind overall global growth figures—a departure from long-running trends that many economists reckon is unsustainable.
The crisp autumn air in Washington this week has been thick with “what-ifs?”
- What if we are only seeing a temporary reprieve before tariff-driven inflation and slowdowns bite harder?
- What if the tariff war escalates with China, with Beijing having announced sweeping new export controls on rare earths and President Donald Trump threatening to instate a 100 percent tariff on Chinese goods?
- What if mounting public and private debt, now above 235 percent of global gross domestic product, becomes a debt shock as growth stumbles and interest payments rise—hitting emerging markets and poorer nations hardest?
- What if monetary tightening, inflation pressures, and fiscal fatigue ultimately undermine economic expansion?
- What if trade fragmentation—regionally oriented supply chains, eroding global trading systems—confounds conventional models and results in everyone growing more slowly?
The IMF itself warned that markets may be underestimating risks tied to tariffs, debt, and financial vulnerabilities. “Buckle up: Uncertainty is the new normal, and it is here to stay,” said Kristalina Georgieva, managing director of the IMF, in her keynote speech ahead of the annual meetings. “Before anyone heaves a big sigh of relief, please hear this: Global resilience has not yet been fully tested.”
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DAY FOUR
EBRD President Odile Renaud-Basso on private capital mobilization in Ukraine
Finance leaders’ word of the week: Jobs
The World Bank’s Lisa Finneran on encouraging and scaling innovation
Visa’s Todd Fox on how fragmentation is impacting payments innovation
Ukrainian Finance Minister Serhiy Marchenko on the future of the IMF’s lending to Kyiv
IFC Director of Research Paolo Mauro on venture capital in emerging economies
The IMF’s message is clear: The time to prepare for AI adoption is now
Commerzbank’s Verena Bitter on trends in transatlantic investment
What to expect on day four of the IMF-World Bank meetings
October 16 | 6:15 PM ET
EBRD President Odile Renaud-Basso on private capital mobilization in Ukraine
European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) Odile Renaud-Basso speaks with Nicole Goldin, head of equitable development at the UNU-Centre for Policy Research and a senior fellow at GeoEconomics Center, about the EBRD’s investments in Ukraine’s economy and the current state of private capital mobilization.
October 16 | 5:52 PM ET
Finance leaders’ word of the week: Jobs
We’re nearly through IMF-World Bank week, and it is at this point when our experts usually begin to mark the divide between the conversations happening at the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. But this week, for economist Nicole Goldin, it’s not the differences that are striking—it’s one major similarity.
“The World Bank is making a can’t-miss reorientation around jobs, but they are not alone in that,” Nicole tells me. “The IMF managing director and her colleagues are also talking jobs.”
So why would the IMF want to join the World Bank in ensuring that people everywhere have (and take) employment opportunities? Nicole, who previously delved into jobs data, policy, and strategy as a World Bank lead economist, shares one reason: Heavy debt, and paying the mounting costs associated with it, “is one of the biggest challenges to macroeconomic stability,” Nicole tells me. “One policy prescription we hear from the IMF is generating domestic revenues. Jobs are critical to this, to expanding the tax base.”
Another reason: AI has the potential to make the financial system more efficient and generate between 0.1 percent and 0.8 percent in global economic growth, as Georgieva noted this morning. But Nicole points out that “countries need the right talent and a technologically skilled workforce to capitalize on new industries and seize digital dividends from deploying AI.”
The third reason is particularly relevant at a time when youth protests are leading to the ousting of leaders around the world: “Without economic opportunity, lost ambition and aspiration can fuel conflict and fragility and destabilize markets.”
October 16 | 5:30 PM ET
The World Bank’s Lisa Finneran on encouraging and scaling innovation
The Global Energy Center’s Ken Berlin speaks with Lisa Finneran, director of innovation at the World Bank about the Bank’s initiatives with governments around the world aimed at driving private-sector innovation.
October 16 | 4:25 PM ET
Visa’s Todd Fox on how fragmentation is impacting payments innovation
Todd Fox, the president of Visa’s Economic Empowerment Institute, joins Atlantic Council Assistant Director Alisha Chhangani to discuss the impact of regulatory fragmentation on digital finance at the Atlantic Council’s World Bank content hub.
October 16 | 3:31 PM ET
Ukrainian Finance Minister Serhiy Marchenko on the future of the IMF’s lending to Kyiv
October 16 | 12:00 PM ET
‘The rest of the world is moving on’ after US strikes at multilateral order, says European Investment Bank’s Nadia Calviño
October 16 | 11:54 AM ET
IFC Director of Research Paolo Mauro on venture capital in emerging economies
Charles Lichfield, director of economic foresight and analysis at the GeoEconomics Center, speaks with Paolo Mauro, director of the International Finance Corporation’s (IFC) Economic and Market Research Department about the IFC’s priorities and recent trends in venture capital in emerging markets.
October 16 | 11:29 AM ET
Economy and Trade Minister Amer Bisat: ‘There’s just not going to be prosperity without the sovereignty of the state’
October 16 | 11:11 AM ET
The IMF’s message is clear: The time to prepare for AI adoption is now
Per IMF research, around 30 percent of jobs in advanced economies will be negatively affected by artificial intelligence (AI)—meaning potential income or job losses. Policy leaders must get ready for what’s coming, and the sooner they start preparing, the better.
Yesterday, I moderated an IMF-World Bank Week panel tackling this issue, where I spoke with two IMF officials, Era Dabla-Norris, the deputy director of the Fiscal Affairs Department and Giovanni Melina, deputy division chief of the structural and climate policy division in the Research Department.
Our conversation explored the risks and opportunities stemming from the rapid rise of AI. If implemented correctly, AI could boost global economic growth by 0.1 to 1.5 percent. But there will be both winners and losers.
The IMF has made preparing for these shifts a top priority. To put things in perspective: in the latest World Economic Outlook, the word AI appears more than thirty times, while climate appears only seventeen times. In its AI Preparedness Index, the IMF assesses 170 countries on their readiness for AI adoption—benchmarking them across categories such as human capital, digital infrastructure, and energy supply.
Most importantly, the IMF is here to help with policy advice. Its message is clear—the time to act is now. Governments must start rethinking unemployment benefits, adjusting taxation to encourage job augmentation rather than automation, and reskilling their labor forces. There’s a lot to be done—but if your country wants to stay ahead in the AI race, there’s no better time to start than today.
October 16 | 10:50 AM ET
Commerzbank’s Verena Bitter on trends in transatlantic investment
Charles Lichfield, the GeoEconomics Center’s director of economic foresight and analysis, talks with US Representative for Commerzbank Verena Bitter about the transatlantic investment climate.
October 16 | 10:43 AM ET
Pakistan’s finance minister on his country’s devastating flooding—and the government’s reforms in response to it
October 16 | 9:03 AM ET
What to expect on day four of the IMF-World Bank meetings
LIVE | #ACDailyBrief: @ACGeoEcon’s Mary Kate Adami joins @JulietteMatos_ to discuss the highlights of the week and what to expect on Day 4 of the IMF-World Bank #AnnualMeetings https://t.co/0vc89Zh0Is
— Atlantic Council (@AtlanticCouncil) October 16, 2025
DAY THREE
The ‘torn umbrella’ problem for developing countries in debt
The next phase in Argentina’s recovery—and the US role in it
The World Bank’s Luis Benveniste on education and the labor market
Behind the scenes with the Atlantic Council at the World Bank during the annual meetings
Mastercard’s Dimitrios Dosis on digital infrastructure and inclusive growth
The World Bank’s Manuela Francisco on turning economic analysis into outcomes
The World Bank’s Lisandro Martín on the upcoming Jobs Indicator
The overlooked views of developing countries
Ireland’s Paschal Donohoe on why his neutral country is ramping up its defense spending
A number worth thinking about this wek: 3.4 billion
How the World Economic Outlook sets the tone for today’s IMF-World Bank meetings
October 15 | 7:28 PM ET
The ‘torn umbrella’ problem for developing countries in debt
For the size of the problem that is sovereign debt, the response from the global community always seems to be not enough.
Today, the IMF convened the Global Sovereign Debt Roundtable, and this week, it has been adamant about the roundtable’s role in addressing the plight of heavily indebted developing countries. It’s an issue that has risen to the top of the international agenda since I left the IMF, just before the COVID-19 pandemic.
But the patchwork effort to help the most indebted countries is flawed, and we’re seeing why in the opening days of these Annual Meetings. The all-important first chapter of the IMF World Economic Outlook only genuflects toward the Group of Twenty Common Framework for debt restructuring (which has consistently amounted to less than promised) and the Global Sovereign Debt Roundtable, which is supposed to address the rules of the road for creditors. The Global Financial Stability Report also says little about the issue, although it does discuss how Eurobonds. issued by so-called frontier economies—those nations that before the pandemic were making progress toward emerging market status—now are expected to offer yields of over 10 percent.
Behind closed doors, the verdict on the international community’s commitment to low-income country debt is decidedly negative. At a roundtable I took part in yesterday, I heard considerable skepticism about both the debt restructuring process and the Global Sovereign Debt Roundtable consultations. As my colleague Nicole Goldin pointed out, developing countries spent $1.4 trillion on debt service payments last year. Countries that together represent over half the population send more money to creditors than they spend on their own people’s health, education, and other needs. Officials worry that a global slowdown or unexpected shocks could send many countries into default.
For low-income countries, the approach seems like a torn umbrella: It will help in a light rain, but in a storm, it will be useless.
October 15 | 5:14 PM ET
The next phase in Argentina’s recovery—and the US role in it
The Atlantic Council hosted Argentina’s delegation to the annual meetings for an hour-long discussion of the country’s economic policies. Economy Minister Luis Caputo and Central Bank President Santiago Bausili took stock of Argentina’s efforts to normalize fiscal and monetary policies, a process that was successfully pursued over the past two years, resulting in a primary fiscal surplus and a significantly improved central bank balance sheet.
They expressed confidence that the exchange rate would continue to depreciate normally within the widening band while inflation was on a gradually declining path. They also characterized US support as instrumental in stabilizing foreign exchange markets ahead of the midterm elections later this month. Details on such support are close to being finalized, and the central bank president emphasized that there would be a close link to the IMF’s current program framework with Argentina.
Caputo explained that the Milei administration’s expectations for the midterms remain conservative, focused on winning more than a third of seats in either house of Argentina’s Congress. This would be sufficient to sustain a presidential veto of legislation that is not in line with the administration’s policy goals. The lack of an absolute majority has not been an obstacle to new reforms in the past, and the minister was confident that the reform momentum would continue.
Caputo also reported a significant increase in US companies’ interest in investing in Argentina, especially in the mining and energy sectors. OpenAI is also reported to be weighing a $25-billion investment in Argentina, potentially providing a major growth impulse to the still sluggish economy.
October 15 | 3:29 PM ET
The World Bank’s Luis Benveniste on education and the labor market
Nour Dabboussi, associate director of the Atlantic Council’s MENA Futures Lab, is joined by World Bank Global Director of Education Luis Benveniste for his take on education reforms, the future of the labor market, and the role of the private sector.
October 15 | 2:46 PM ET
Spain’s Carlos Cuerpo responds to Trump’s tariff threats over NATO spending: ‘We’re making good on our commitments’
October 15 | 12:20 PM ET
Behind the scenes with the Atlantic Council at the World Bank during the annual meetings
Juliet Lancy, a young global professional at the GeoEconomics Center, gives a tour of the Atlantic Council’s pop-up studio, where it records and broadcasts events and interviews during the IMF-World Bank annual meetings.
October 15 | 11:38 AM ET
Mastercard’s Dimitrios Dosis on digital infrastructure and inclusive growth
Alisha Chhangani, an assistant director at the GeoEconomics Center, speaks with Dimitrios Dosis, president for Eastern Europe, Middle East, and Africa at Mastercard, about the potential for digital infrastructure to drive inclusive growth.
October 15 | 11:10 AM ET
The World Bank’s Manuela Francisco on turning economic analysis into outcomes
Bart Piasecki, an assistant director at the GeoEconomics Center, talks with Manuela Francisco, global director of economic policy at the World Bank, about the Bank’s Country Growth and Jobs Report.
October 15 | 11:07 AM ET
The World Bank’s Lisandro Martín on the upcoming Jobs Indicator
Lize de Kruijf, a program assistant at the GeoEconomics Center’s Economic Statecraft Initiative, speaks with World Bank Department of Outcomes Director Lisandro Martín on the Bank’s upcoming Jobs Indicator.
October 15 | 11:04 AM ET
The overlooked views of developing countries
One of the perpetually overlooked events of the Annual Meetings is the gathering of finance ministers and central bank governors from emerging market and developing economies known as the Intergovernmental Group of Twenty-Four, or G24. Unlike its Group of Twenty (G20) counterpart, which brings together the world’s largest economies, the G24 serves as a voice for smaller countries—one that normally isn’t heard as the meetings proceed. In my twenty-plus years in the IMF Communications Department, the twice-yearly G24 press conferences were normally treated as an afterthought in planning, and mainstream media rarely gives attention to its communiques.
Which is too bad, because the G24 statement usually contains a plain-spoken summary of the issues that are on the front burner for countries that represent a vast swath of the world’s population. If the watchwords of these annual meetings are “uncertainty” and “opportunity,” the G24 only has room for the former. The communique issued yesterday highlights “humanitarian suffering,” “trade tensions,” “high debt burdens and rising debt-servicing costs” and the continuing need for “climate action.” (In the all-important first chapter of the World Economic Outlook, whose publication yesterday overshadowed the G24, climate change is relegated to the final paragraph.)
Underlying it all is concern about falling exports and declining foreign-exchange earnings, all of which add up to “constrained” growth, “magnifying risks” to macroeconomic stability, and a bleaker medium-term outlook. With development assistance from the advanced economies declining, the G24 offers up a proposal for the IMF to “consider exploring a mechanism for the regular issuance of Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) to better support” developing countries. The IMF tried that after the COVID-19 pandemic, but most of the SDRs ended up in the coffers of the largest economies. The idea of an SDR issuance to low-income countries was also discussed at yesterday’s IMF Week seminar on “a global response to sovereign debt pressures and climate change.” It remains to be seen whether the views of the G24 will resonate as the powerhouse economies of the Bretton Woods institutions settle in for their deliberations this week—or whether the group will remain a voice in the wilderness.
October 15 | 11:00 AM ET
Ireland’s Paschal Donohoe on why his neutral country is ramping up its defense spending
October 15 | 9:58 AM ET
A number worth thinking about this week: 3.4 billion
The IMF-World Bank Annual Meetings are officially in full swing, and if there’s a topic on everyone’s mind, it’s debt. The topic of climate change, on the other hand, is on many minds, but it isn’t making its way into many conversations this week—one exception being a conversation I led yesterday, in partnership with the Heinrich Böll Foundation and SOAS University of London.
These topics are top of mind for good reason. I, like most economists, like to go “by the numbers,” so here is one number that shows why many of us in Foggy Bottom are thinking about debt and climate change: 3.4 billion.
That figure represents nearly half the world’s population. It’s also the number of people living in developing countries whose governments spend more on their debt service than they do on health or education, according to a report released this year by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD).
This same figure is also the midpoint of the estimated range (3.2-3.6 billion) of the number of people living in areas disproportionately experiencing the effects of climate change, including rising sea levels and weather events such as extreme heat, droughts, and floods.
The implications are staggering. In 2024, developing countries spent $1.4 trillion in debt service payments. The money spent servicing debt is money that cannot be spent investing in people and prosperity: not only in health and education, but also in infrastructure, energy, technology, and the services needed for economic growth and equitable development. Combined with dwindling official development assistance and reduced trade and foreign direct investment, developing countries—including some of the most vulnerable to climate change—lack the fiscal space to invest in mitigation, adaptation, or resilience.
Debt dynamics and other financial trends factor prominently in today’s World Economic Outlook and Global Financial Stability Report and they will spark discussion (case in point: check out our discussion yesterday “decoding” the reports only hours after they launched). They are certainly worthy of all the talk, but it is important not to lose sight of the human toll—the ultimate costs to the lives and livelihoods of 3.4 billion people that must be urgently addressed.
October 15 | 9:36 AM ET
How the World Economic Outlook sets the tone for today’s IMF-World Bank meetings
LIVE NOW | #ACDailyBrief: It’s Day 3 of the @WorldBank and @IMFNews #AnnualMeetings. Watch the Atlantic Council’s @JulietteMatos_ and @ACGeoEcon’s @bart_piasecki preview the day’s top events and key speakers. https://t.co/UnqwsVvxBz
— Atlantic Council (@AtlanticCouncil) October 15, 2025
DAY TWO
Good numbers, but a gloomy forecast, for the global economy
What to know about the World Bank’s new AgriConnect initiative
What Trump 1.0 trade negotiators think about the second administration’s tariff strategy
US-China trade spat moves supply chains to top of mind
What to expect at today’s IMF-World Bank meetings
October 14 | 6:47 PM ET
Good numbers, but a gloomy forecast, for the global economy
Today, the International Monetary Fund released its highly anticipated World Economic Outlook (affectionately abbreviated “WEO”). And as I tuned in to the launch from IMF headquarters, I noticed a glaring contrast between the report’s upgrade to global growth forecasts and its overall gloomy tone, reflected in the headline: “Global Economy in Flux, Prospects Remain Dim.”
Our top numbers cruncher, Hung Tran, tells me that’s kind of the point. Hung worked at the IMF for six years, during which he had a hand in these kinds of reports. The IMF is trying to tell us, he says, that the economy is faring “better than feared,” but “worse than what we need.”
On the positive side, Hung points to upgraded economic growth estimates for countries such as the United States, India, and China. This is due in part, he adds, to the world’s relative restraint from deploying retaliatory tariffs against the United States.
But on the grimmer side, Hung notes that the WEO lists a number of “downside risks,” from a “possible slowdown in the AI boom” to “high public debt” to “pressure on central banks,” which could destabilize financial markets. But “the WEO emphasizes the importance of policy and policy cooperation,” without getting to the roots of the problem, Hung says: “US protectionism and Chinese mercantilism.” That, he says, is what is “squeezing many countries in the rest of the world.”
“To say that we need good policies and cooperation is not a solution,” Hung warns.
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October 14 | 4:23 PM ET
Saudi Finance Minister Mohammed Aljadaan sounds the alarm on the world’s ‘very serious’ debt challenge
October 14 | 12:35 PM ET
What to know about the World Bank’s new AgriConnect initiative
Charles Lichfield, director of economic foresight and analysis at the Atlantic Council’s GeoEconomics Center, outlines the three most important things to know about AgriConnect, a new initiative from the World Bank as the institution aims to pivot to its “new north star”: creating jobs.
October 14 | 12:26 PM ET
Europe may be losing momentum for realizing the single market, says Irish Central Bank Governor Gabriel Makhlouf
October 14 | 10:39 AM ET
What Trump 1.0 trade negotiators think about the second administration’s tariff strategy
OCTOBER 14 | 10:30 AM ET
US-China trade spat moves supply chains to top of mind
The IMF-World Bank Annual Meetings have kicked off following another rupture in the US-China trade relationship after Beijing’s tightened export restrictions on rare earth elements (REE) last Thursday. As one of the most important trade relationships in the world enters a new period of uncertainty, expect supply-chain management to now play a bigger role than ever.
China’s announcement strikes at the heart of US dependence on REE supply chains: China controls around 70 percent of rare earth extraction, 90 percent of refining, and 93 percent of magnet production (which uses rare earths) worldwide.
As of December this year, companies will be required to secure permission before exporting any product with more than 0.1 percent of its value attributable to a rare earth originating in China. In effect, the policy extends Beijing’s control of the supply chain much further downstream, reflecting a mechanism the United States has previously used to control chip exports—even companies manufacturing and selling products outside of China would theoretically need authorization if the product’s REE content falls above the designated value. A ban on the export of any rare earths to foreign militaries further complicates the supply-chain picture; for example, it is unclear whether a company such as Boeing or General Motors—both of which produce goods for the defense sector—are counted as such. These restrictions are also not specifically designated against the United States, giving China the latitude to use its REE export dominance against other countries should it deem necessary.
To date, the Trump administration has been aggressive in attempting to manage wider risks associated with China’s supply-chain dominance. The administration has consistently worked to secure non-Chinese sources of REE including resource development opportunities in negotiations with Ukraine, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Greenland. This summer’s major deal (led by the Department of Defense) with MP Materials represents another effort to improve domestic supply-chain resilience. Yet bringing these opportunities online at scale takes time, and as a result, REE have been an important lever in trade negotiations with China. Case in point: A framework agreement toward a US-China trade deal this past June included a drawdown in REE export restrictions that China had announced over the past several months.
That’s possibly why Thursday’s announcement had been met with such an aggressive White House response, in the form of a proposed 100 percent retaliatory tariff on China and talk of canceling a meeting between US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping. And while Trump has walked back his threats, the exchange still largely resets trade negotiations back to where they were earlier this year, with supply chains caught in the middle.
There are two observations from these latest flare-ups that will be of use to the officials descending upon Foggy Bottom this week, some wanting to talk trade on the sidelines of the annual meetings. First, it is clear that risks to global supply chains are entering a new phase. While China’s Ministry of Commerce aimed to clarify the scope of these new restrictions on Sunday, whether (or how) China will enforce these new and powerful tools is still unclear. China’s willingness to use such tools will continue to be hard to ignore, even if wider trade tensions cool. Second, Washington’s pursuit of alternative sources for REEs now bears even more urgency—and opportunity. Though China dominates REE supply chains, REEs themselves aren’t necessarily rare. But accessing them and integrating them into the economy requires thoughtful and precise supply-chain partnerships. Other countries may find that their own REE resources can help enhance their trade negotiations with the United States on the basis of alternative supply-chain development. It will take time for alternative resources to alleviate the US dependency on China, but the need to reduce China’s REE dominance, its leverage in trade negotiations, and its risk to US national security will weigh increasingly heavy as the US administration continues to work to address its trade-balance concerns.
October 14 | 9:02 AM ET
What to expect at today’s IMF-World Bank meetings
LIVE NOW | #ACDailyBrief: The @WorldBank and @IMFNews #AnnualMeetings are underway. Watch the Atlantic Council’s @JulietteMatos_ and @ACGeoEcon’s Jessie Yin discuss today’s must-watch events, key speakers, and big issues on the agenda.https://t.co/IrSz24UIKG
— Atlantic Council (@AtlanticCouncil) October 14, 2025
DAY ONE
Why you won’t hear enough about the Gaza peace plan at IMF-World Bank week
Expect IMF-World Bank meeting debates over China, the US, Ukraine, and more—behind closed doors
As the trade war resumes, China may be keeping one eye on Trump and one on the Supreme Court
Jobs and AI to dominate the IMF-World Bank Annual Meetings
The five important issues at the IMF-World Bank Annual Meetings
OCTOBER 13 | 5:30 PM ET
Why you won’t hear enough about the Gaza peace plan at IMF-World Bank week
The IMF-World Bank Annual Meetings kicked off today, on the same day that US President Donald Trump visited Israel to mark the implementation of phase one of his Gaza peace plan.
On the surface, the two events seem completely disconnected, but anyone who has been part of international finance over the past two years knows the opposite is true.
On October 8, 2023, I landed alongside my Atlantic Council colleagues in Marrakesh for that year’s IMF-World Bank Annual Meetings. Throughout the airport, our hotel, and the conference venue, television news played the horrific images of October 7 on loop, and the world’s finance ministers and central bank governors were asked for their thoughts on the unfolding war. They largely demurred, arguing that it was too early to tell if there would be any economic repercussions. I criticized that response at the time.
Fast forward to the 2024 spring meetings. Two days before the meetings began, Iran launched hundreds of drones and missiles toward Israel. The markets reacted sharply, and the risk of a wider war trickled into every conversation. But the threat passed, markets rebounded, and the world’s finance ministers went back to business.
Now, here we are again. Financial leaders will discuss tariffs, debt, a US government shutdown, the growth of artificial intelligence, the future of the dollar, the bailout in Argentina, and more. But the one thing they likely won’t talk about is the cease-fire in Gaza.
Economists have been trained for decades to separate the worlds of macroeconomics and geopolitics, despite time and again being reminded that’s not how the world works. Just look back to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which triggered the most sweeping sanctions response in history.
Events over the past few years remind us why the Bretton Woods institutions were created in the midst of World War II: to deliver economic prosperity in the hopes of fostering peace. But in recent decades, the world’s financial leaders have focused solely on the prosperity part (with mixed results) and have sometimes forgotten the larger goal.
To continue to earn the trust of the member countries they serve, these institutions must remember their roots.
OCTOBER 13 | 11:15 AM ET
Expect IMF-World Bank meeting debates over China, the US, Ukraine, and more—behind closed doors
Once again, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank Annual Meetings will unfold against a turbulent global backdrop. In their speeches and prepared statements, delegates will raise concerns about the global economic outlook, fret about rising fiscal deficits and hidden risks in private equity and crypto markets, and make the case for their own policy efforts in front of the global community. A joint communiqué is unlikely, in part because both the United States and China will not agree to language aimed at reining in their isolationist or mercantilist tendencies for the benefit of the rest of the world.
But this is not what observers should focus on most this week. Instead, it’s worth closely watching for a hint of what is happening behind closed doors. There, conversations will focus on the few areas for which the two institutions still enjoy the support of their major shareholders—not the least because the IMF’s and World Bank’s considerable financial resources look ever more appealing to finance ministers who are running out of fiscal space at home.
The United States and the IMF
To begin with, most delegations will be keenly interested in Washington’s relationship with the Bretton Woods twins. US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent signaled support for the institutions at the spring meetings this year, recently firmed up by the US intervention in the Argentine peso. But while policymakers may talk of partnership, the power asymmetry within the IMF remains evident.
There is a possible upside to greater US engagement—including improved cooperation on major lending cases and a push for the IMF to strengthen its surveillance arm, a core mandate much neglected in recent years. Similarly, the United States could collaborate with the two Bretton Woods institutions to ensure that countries meet their loan conditions, enabling timely repayment. The administration might even convince Congress to ratify the 2023 quota increase, shifting the fund’s finances to a more permanent capital base.
But there is also a risk. Already reeling from the dissolution of the US Agency for International Development, many delegates are bracing for US demands to cut climate and, perhaps, development programs at the IMF and World Bank, which could lead to substantial friction with emerging market and developing countries. Moreover, there are concerns that the United States could politicize both lenders’ loan operations, exposing all shareholders to the risks of misconstrued lending programs.
Read more
OCTOBER 12 | 4:36 PM ET
As the trade war resumes, China may be keeping one eye on Trump and one on the Supreme Court
The big question in Washington this weekend, following the latest exchange in the US-China trade war: What went wrong?
On Thursday, China announced sweeping new export controls on rare earths, and the following day, US President Donald Trump threatened to reinstate 100 percent tariffs on Chinese goods (on top of existing tariffs) and cancel his long-awaited meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
That flurry of action came after a quiet summer, during which the world’s two largest economies put their trade war on hold and Trump said increasingly nice things about Xi. Just three weeks ago, the two leaders had what Trump called a “very productive” phone call, agreeing to finally meet face-to-face in South Korea at the end of October.
Then, on September 29, the US Department of Commerce issued the so-called “affiliates rule,” which—as an interim final rule—went into effect immediately, without full notice and comment. It placed export controls on thousands of foreign companies that are 50 percent owned or controlled by listed entities. Even though the rule doesn’t mention China, Chinese companies are on the lists, so the measure directly affects them.
Beijing viewed the move as a violation of the spirit of Geneva, where US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and his counterpart, He Lifeng, brokered a temporary truce in May. So on Thursday, China added five new elements to its rare-earth licensing regime. Remember, this is the same authority that caused supply shortages at Ford factories in Michigan in June—and arguably pushed Trump and Xi to the negotiating table in the first place.
Trump, of course, reached for his favorite tool in response: tariffs. And now, many are watching to see whether Asian markets dip on Monday into what could be their biggest drawdown in months. Trump, perhaps wary of the market reaction, posted on Truth Social on Sunday, “Don’t worry about China, it will all be fine! Highly respected President Xi just had a bad moment.”
But there’s something I think analysts are missing in all of this: the Supreme Court.
Read more
OCTOBER 10 | 9:28 AM ET
Jobs and AI to dominate the IMF-World Bank Annual Meetings
The GeoEconomics Center’s Sophia Busch and Bart Piasecki outline what to expect at the 2025 IMF-World Bank Annual Meetings.
OCTOBER 8 | 2:28 PM ET
The five important issues at the IMF-World Bank Annual Meetings
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank are gearing up for their annual meetings next week. Amid increasingly high stakes, this year’s gathering has special significance, seeing as the United States, after having withdrawn from several other international organizations and agreements, still remains active in the two Bretton Woods institutions.
At these annual meetings, the IMF and the World Bank will face five important issues, which span both near-term economic prospects and more fundamental, longer-term challenges confronting the global economy.
1. Navigating growth—and inflation
Recent data show a rather resilient global economy, particularly in the United States. Despite concerns about rising tariffs and ongoing uncertainty, economic activity has held up since the second quarter of the year—so much so that 2025 gross domestic product (GDP) growth estimates have been recently revised upward, to 3.2 percent globally (according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) and 2.5 percent for the United States (according to Goldman Sachs). Stock markets have also performed well, with the MSCI World Index posting a 14.3 percent return year-to-date, roughly matching the S&P 500’s 14.4 percent, though a price-to-earnings ratio of thirty (compared to a long-term average of nineteen) suggests the market valuation could be stretched. Global inflation has slowed noticeably, from 5.67 percent in 2024 to an estimated 4.29 percent this year. In the United States, the consumer price index growth rate fell from 3 percent in January to 2.3 percent in April, before rebounding to 2.9 percent in August.
But this resilience may not last. Evidence suggests that the good performance of the global economy and stock markets has been narrowly based, driven by a handful of high-tech corporations (the so-called Magnificent Seven) pouring money into artificial intelligence (AI) hardware, software, and data centers. In fact, according to JP Morgan Asset Management, AI-related capital expenditures have accounted for 1.1 percent of the 1.6 percent GDP growth in the first half of 2025. Such intensive investment could prove unsustainable, and a slowdown could ripple through the broader economy and stock markets. Meanwhile, US importers are likely beginning to pass more of the costs of tariffs onto retail customers, driving up consumer prices. If new tariffs keep coming, that would sustain the inflation process going forward.
It is up to the IMF to present a convincing analysis of the economy’s vulnerability to concentration risk (dependence on AI related activities) and the likely delayed effects of rising tariffs, which boost the likelihood of mild stagflation in the near future, especially in the United States; it is also up to the Fund to advise countries to adopt policies to mitigate this risk. This could be a challenge, especially when major economies can point to decent economic performance so far this year and may feel complacent.
Read more
Further reading
Sun, Oct 12, 2025
As the trade war resumes, China may be keeping one eye on Trump and one on the Supreme Court
New Atlanticist By Josh Lipsky
The US president’s leverage with Xi Jinping could be undercut by the Supreme Court's deliberations.
Tue, Oct 7, 2025
How a weaker US dollar can help debt-burdened African countries
New Atlanticist By Bart Piasecki
Trump’s drive to weaken the US dollar is having global side effects. For some African countries, it is helping to ease immediate fiscal pressures.
Tue, Sep 30, 2025
Is the US currency rescue for Argentina positive statecraft or reckless favoritism?
New Atlanticist By Martin Mühleisen
A twenty-billion-dollar US support package for Argentina announced last week provides crucial breathing room for President Javier Milei.
Image: The IMF-World Bank Annual Meetings kick off in Washington, DC on October 13, 2025. Photo by Katherine Golden/Atlantic Council.
