DISCLAIMER: Le opinioni espresse in questo articolo riflettono unicamente la posizione personale dell’autore/autrice.
Today’s speech by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on the role of the two institutions that emerged 80 years ago from the Bretton Woods international monetary conference is out of time. President Trump showed how the US intention is to resist the progressive weakening of the hegemonic role of the dollar (and the US) internationally by turning back the hands of history. But history, unfortunately for them, cannot simply be rewound like a tape.
Let’s take a step back and start with Project 2025, an articulated document from a few months ago that the White House is putting into practice day after day. A document that suggested the US withdraw from international institutions, because they were no longer consistent with US interests. In the meantime, last November, Miran (later appointed Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers) signed a paper that spelled out the strategy to be pursued in international markets: implement aggressive forms, both commercial and monetary, to force the rest of the world to pay to maintain the dollar-based global order. Since the enemy-China is unlikely to go along with these choices, the burden would fall on the traditional allies (Canada, Japan, EU); willingly or not. On pain of the end of the US defence umbrella and economic retaliation of various kind.
Bessent’s statements go in exactly the same direction. Hence the attack against the attempts of the current leadership of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank to no longer do their job as guarantors of (US hegemonic) stability and the call for them to return to their historical role. The point is that that role stemmed from the overwhelming military superiority exercised by the US in the Second World War, which in some ways legitimised its hegemony also on the economic-financial level. A world that has not existed for a long time. However much Trump tries to exploit the alliance with the second nuclear power on the planet (Putin’s Russia) to restore the balance of power resting on nuclear warhead accounting, China, India and other regional powers can no longer be ignored. Global financial institutions also need to face new challenges, such as becoming a rreu lender of last resirt, financing global publici goods, making the SDR the “principal reserve asset”, as the Articles of Agreement (the Statute) of the IMF claim.
The US can exercise moral suasion over the Bretton Woods institutions, which regulate the disbursement of credit to countries and thus represent an extraordinarily important element of political control. They are based in Washington, but only because at the moment the US economy is still the most important. But China is getting closer. And Europe could always decide to participate in the IMF with a single representative. Which would shift the voting rights and seat to China or Europe, sanctioning de jure the end of a hegemony that is no longer in fact. Calling for the return of the IMF and World Bank to their original functions is a warning that the two institutions should not take over the evolution of the world by responding to new challenges, but simply turn back the hands of history.
