Something similar has happened to efforts to ensure a coordinated global economic response to the pandemic. To be clear, that is an unwelcome development: most of the improvement will be down to reduced stimulus spending, which will starve the recovery of oxygen. As Adam Tooze writes of the first G-20 summit in Crashed – How a Decade of Financial Crises Change the World, “On his way out of office, Bush’s administration, which had given unilateralism a bad name, would reluctantly inaugurate a new chapter in multilateralism." Just maintaining stimulus spending would be no small victory. The next chapter in multilateralism will look very different from the last, but if it is put off much longer, it won’t begin at all.

Source: Mint November 20, 2020 09:00 UTC