Davos, Switzerland. Finance leaders said on Friday the world order is changing but not enduring a rupture, pushing back against Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s narrative that a new order was taking shape.
Carney warns of the end of a rules-based order
In a speech at Davos, Carney called on nations to accept that a rules-based global order was over and that great powers were abandoning even the pretence of following international agreements. Quoting ancient Greek historian Thucydides, Carney said the world was entering a period in which “the strong can do what they can and the weak must suffer what they must”.
Lagarde says focus should be on alternatives, not rupture
European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde told the World Economic Forum in Davos, days after Carney’s appearance, that she did not share his view. “I’m not exactly on the same page as Mark,” Lagarde said. “I’m not sure that we should be talking about rupture.” She said the discussion should instead be about alternatives, including identifying weaknesses, dependencies and autonomy.
WTO chief expects uncertainty to ease, but not disappear
World Trade Organisation chief Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said uncertainty was unlikely to remain as high as this month, when US President Donald Trump threatened to take over Greenland from Nato ally Denmark. She said the old order was not going to return, uncertainty would linger, and countries must invest in their own resilience. “I don’t think we’ll go back to where we were. But they will not be as bad and maybe we’ll have a slightly better, steady state for the future,” she said. Okonjo-Iweala added that if she were running a country, she would focus on strengthening the country and its region and building resilience.
IMF’s Georgieva says change is natural and shocks will continue
Kristalina Georgieva, the International Monetary Fund’s director, said change was natural and had been happening for years, and that it was time to embrace this because shocks would keep happening.
How do you think governments should respond to a changing global order?