U.S. presidential election looms over IMF and World Bank annual meetings

The World Bank building is pictured in Washington, April 5, 2021. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

Global finance leaders face a major uncertainty as they meet in Washington next week: Who will win the U.S. presidential election and shape the policies of the world’s biggest economy?

Republican nominee former President Donald Trump and Democratic nominee Vice President Kamala Harris have spoken little about their plans for the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. But their differing views on trade, tariffs and other economic issues will be on the minds of the finance leaders as they attend the financial institutions' annual meetings.

IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva alluded to what’s at stake in a curtain-raiser speech Thursday ahead of the meetings.

Without naming Trump, she warned that “major players, driven by national security concerns, are increasingly resorting to industrial policy and protectionism, creating one trade restriction after another.”

She said trade “will not be the same engine of growth as before,” warning that trade restrictions are “like pouring cold water on an already-lukewarm world economy.”

Trump promises as president to impose a 60% tariff on all Chinese goods and a “universal’’ tariff of 10% or 20% on everything else that enters the United States, insisting that the cost of taxing imported goods is absorbed by the foreign countries that produce those goods.

However, mainstream economists say they actually amount to a tax on American consumers that would make the economy less efficient and send inflation surging in the United States.

Trump has also embraced isolationism and heavily criticized multilateral institutions. During his first term, he signed an executive order to withdraw from the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal, and replaced the North American Free Trade Agreement with the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement. His administration blocked new appointments to the World Trade Organization appellate body as the terms of its judges expired, leaving the organization without a functional appellate body.

World Bank President Ajay Banga, who also made a speech Thursday previewing the meetings, spoke directly about the election in a question-and-answer session with reporters. He credited Trump for increasing investment in the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development during his presidency, which offers loans to middle-income developing countries.

“Then the question will be, how will the nuances of each administration be different,” Banga said. “I don't know yet so I'm not going to speculate on how to deal with them.”

Harris has not specified her views on the World Bank or IMF, though even as she has embraced some tariffs, is more likely to continue the Biden administration approach favouring international cooperation over threats. The Biden-Harris administration has not eliminated tariffs imposed on China during the Trump administration and in May also slapped major tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles, advanced batteries, solar cells, steel, aluminum and medical equipment.

Harris met Banga in June 2023 when he began his five-year term as World Bank president and released a statement then that “praised the steps taken to evolve the World Bank—including expanding its mission to include building resilience to global challenges like climate change, pandemics, fragility and conflict."

Georgieva who did not speak about the election directly in her speech, said: “We live in a mistrustful, fragmented world where national security has risen to the top of the list of concerns for many countries. This has happened before — but never in a time of such high economic co-dependence. My argument is that we must not allow this reality to become an excuse to do nothing to prevent a further fracturing of the global economy.”