BY DAVID LAWDER AND ANDREA SHALAL
WASHINGTON – Hundreds of global finance leaders will descend on Washington this week, each with a singular mission: Who can I talk with to cut a trade deal?
The semi-annual gatherings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank Group are bustling affairs with high-level multilateral policy talks, but also one-on-one meetings between finance ministers eager to broker deals on things like project financing, foreign investment back home and, for poorer economies, debt relief.
This year, rather than policy coordination on climate change, inflation and financial support for Ukraine’s struggle against Russia’s invasion, one issue will dominate: tariffs.
More specifically, how to get out from under – or at least minimize – the pain from US President Donald Trump’s unprecedented barrage of steep import taxes since his return to the White House in January.
And the focus may be largely on one man, new US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who is Trump’s lead negotiator for tariff deals and whose support for the IMF and World Bank remains a question mark.
“Trade wars will dominate the week, as will the bilateral negotiations that nearly every country is trying to pursue in some way, shape or form,” said Josh Lipsky, senior director of the Atlantic Council’s GeoEconomics Center. “So this becomes a Spring Meetings unlike any others, dominated by one single issue.”
Trump’s tariffs are already darkening the IMF’s economic forecasts, due to be released on Tuesday, which will put more pressure on developing country debt burdens.
IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said last week that the World Economic Outlook’s growth projections will include “notable markdowns but not recession,” largely due to “off the charts” uncertainty and market volatility caused by the tariff turmoil.
Although Georgieva said the world’s real economy continues to function well, she warned that increasingly negative perceptions about the trade turmoil and concerns about recession could slow economic activity.
Lipsky said a potential new challenge for policymakers is whether the dollar will still be a safe haven asset, after Trump’s tariffs sparked a sell-off in US Treasury debt.
The IMF and World Bank meetings, along with a sideline gathering of Group of 20 finance leaders have proved crucial forums for coordinating forceful policy actions in times of crisis, such as the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2008-2009 global financial crisis.
This time, with trade ministers in tow, delegations will be aiming to shore up their own economies first, policy experts say.
“The focus of these meetings in the past couple of years, which has been heavily on multilateral development bank reform and to some extent on strengthening the sovereign debt architecture, will fall by the wayside,” said Nancy Lee, a former US Treasury official who is a senior policy fellow at the Center for Global Development in Washington.
Japan, pressured by Trump’s 25 percent tariffs on autos and steel and reciprocal tariffs on everything else that could hit 24 percent, is particularly keen to sew up a US tariff deal quickly.
With talks more advanced than those of other countries and participation by Trump, Japanese Finance Minister Katsunobu Kato is expected to meet with Bessent to resume the negotiations on the sidelines of the IMF and World Bank gathering.
South Korean Finance Minister Choi Sang-mok also accepted an invitation from Bessent to meet this week to discuss trade, Seoul’s finance ministry said as the export-dependent US ally seeks to delay implementation of 25 percent tariffs and cooperate with the US on areas of mutual interest such as energy and shipbuilding.
