Is the World at Risk of a New Economic Cold War?

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CHIEF INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: Now, over 30 years after the Iron Curtain came down, could the world be edging towards a new Cold War? Our next guest says that mounting tensions between the planet’s most powerful nations have caused the global economy to fragment into regional competing blocs. First managing director at the IMF joins Walter Isaacson to discuss this turning point for the world economy.

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WALTER ISAACSON, CO-HOST, AMANPOUR AND CO.: Thank you, Christiane. and Gita Gopinath, welcome to the show.

GITA GOPINATH, FIRST DEPUTY MANAGING DIRECTOR, INTERNATIONAL MONETARY FUND: Hi, Walter. It’s a pleasure to join you.

ISAACSON: In a recent article in “Foreign Policy” magazine, you talk about the retreat from globalization, from this notion of free trade, that we’re making a course correction and doing more on shoring. Isn’t that a good idea, given the pandemic, the supply chain problems we’ve had, and even the Ukraine war?

GOPINATH: Walter, what we are seeing is that increasingly national security and economic security concerns are driving trade policy. And the outcome of that is a large increase in the number of restrictions that are being put on trade. So, just this last year, there were 3,000 new trade restrictions that were imposed by countries. In 2019, that number was less than 1,000. So, we are seeing an increase in restrictions. While we don’t necessarily see a decline in globalization, which is if you look at the overall amount of global trade as a share of GDP, what we are seeing is fragmentation, which is some countries are trading more with likeminded countries as opposed to others. So, if you look at, for instance, the two powers, the U.S. and China, and countries picking partners to trade with, we’ve seen a significant reduction in trade between the U.S. and China, in terms of direct trade links between the U.S. and China. So, that’s a sense in which we are seeing increasing signs of fragmentation.

ISAACSON: Do you think this could lead to a new Cold War, at least an economic Cold War?

GOPINATH: It depends upon how countries are going to manage this going forward. We are at a time when the amount of economic integration we have is much higher than it was during the Cold War. There is trade between countries, it’s now 60 percent of global GDP. In 1950, that number was 16 percent. So, the costs of going into a full-blown Cold War II would be very high compared to what it was back then. And that’s why we do see attempts by countries and leaders around the world to maintain lines of communication. The U.S. and China are working together. They have these working groups in place. The two presidents meet to — you know, again, to make sure that we don’t go down a very bad slippery slope. So, in that sense, I maintain some hope that we can avoid a really bad Cold War.

ISAACSON: But let’s look at the bigger picture here. For about 20, 30 years, we did a whole lot more trade. There was a lot more offshoring. Jobs left — the manufacturing jobs left the United States. This led to a lot of populist backlash, led to a lot of problems. Did we overdo trade and globalization, and for that matter, immigration? And, as I think even your own boss, the head of the IMF said, don’t we need a course correction on this over hyper globalization?

GOPINATH: Well, we have to acknowledge that globalization did not make everybody winners. Now, that was actually never expected. It is always the case that when you end up with greater trade ties, you do have winners, but you also do have some people who lose out now. Now, how do you fix that? You fix that by having the right kinds of domestic policies to make sure that those who are losing jobs in the sectors that are getting, for instance, sent to other countries, those workers get retrained, they get reskilled, and they get matched with newer industries. That’s what needs to happen.

ISAACSON: Wait, wait. Let me question you on that. Has — have you ever seen any reskilling and retraining programs actually work?

GOPINATH: There have been examples where it’s worked, but I will agree with you that, in general, this has been much harder to make happen. But, for me, the lesson is not that that means that this is not the right path to go down. I think it means that countries haven’t done enough. And much more focus needs to be paid to it. Now, again, I will absolutely accept the fact that we’ve had a period of hyper globalization where not enough attention was paid to communities that were getting negatively impacted and also, not attention — enough attention was being paid to the resilience of these supply chains. And we saw that the pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have all exposed that. And so, it is right for countries to pause and, you know, figure out how they’re going to make sure that their economies are much more protected and that people are much more protected. The only thing I would warn against is going down a slippery slope where, ultimately, all this then becomes just about economic competition. And we end up with basically losing all the positive gains we’ve had from closer integration.

ISAACSON: One thing that President Biden and Former President Trump almost agree on is that we have to do a lot more to bring manufacturing back to the United States. Is that a mistaken goal?

GOPINATH: You know, the policy — policies that help economies, and we’ve seen this repeatedly across countries, is — are policies that improve infrastructure, that improve the human capital off their country, that provide apprenticeship programs, training programs. So, when you put those kinds of policies in place and remove distortions in the economy, they do create the right kinds of industries. And so, that kind of a strategy, which is building up infrastructure is — it’s a good thing. It helps everybody and not just the manufacturing sector. The other thing we have to keep in mind in terms of manufacturing is, again, recognizing that there’s a whole lot more automation now in manufacturing than it used to be in the past. So, you could actually increase the manufacturing sector in terms of size, but it would not necessarily create those many more jobs.

ISAACSON: So, what would be, in your mind, the proper way to move back a bit from the era of hyper globalization to try to protect against the supply chain shocks we’ve had, and for that matter, the loss of jobs in manufacturing? Other than retraining, what would be the proper way to calibrate this?

GOPINATH: Well, firstly, countries need to diversify their supply chains more than they did. There was a period where the focus was exclusively on efficiency. And buying from the cheapest possible source, that meant relying very heavily on one or two countries, and that exposes you to risks. So, diversification is important. And we see actually companies going ahead and doing that, which is diversifying their supply chains. Secondly, it is important for countries to come together and reform the trading system that we have. Right now, the rules of the game don’t deliver benefits for everybody. It is important for countries to fix it. And this is, again — you know, it is the job of countries to do. So, right now, this month, there is a high-level ministerial conference that’s taking place at the World Trade Organization. That is an opportunity to — for countries to sit together and improve the trading system that we have, including fixing the dispute resolution mechanism that has broken down, addressing concerns about industrial policies and industrial subsidies being used across the world. They can do it, but you really need to have the right intention. And lastly, in terms of workers, you need to have stronger social safety nets. And also, what we should keep in mind that an important fraction of the jobs that were lost in manufacturing did not come because of globalization, it came because of automation. So that, of course, takes us to another important area that is developing the world, which is artificial intelligence and the consequences that could have for labor markets. So, you know, many actions will be required on multiple fronts.

ISAACSON: Your piece in “Foreign Policy,” I loved it because it was very historical. And you even go back to right before World War I. And back then, we thought, as people say now, that more trade, more global commerce, will lead to greater peace. But that certainly was not the case when, right before World War I, world trade was higher than it’s ever been, and yet, we got into a world war. What do you think it is now? Is it true that more global trade will lead to more stability?

GOPINATH: What we have seen in history is that when economies are weak, they are in recessions, there are job loses, we saw that during the Great Depression, of an immense kind, that’s when people want to turn away from global integration. That’s when they — you know, there is an incentive to move away from engaging with the rest of the world, including through trade. Right now, we have a global economy that has actually been more resilient than we expected it would be, despite the big increase in interest rates that have happened around the world, and the pandemic, and the war. Despite all of that, we have resilience. So, I think we have to pause and just recognize that this integration that we have seen has helped countries remain resilient and make sure you don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. So, you have to be careful about that. It is still very much the case that having integration with the rest of the world, these trade relationships have benefited countries. They help in terms of productivity, they help in terms of affordability, all of this is valuable. But at the same time, this is also the time for countries to build more resilience and not just be about efficiency, but build resilience to address both national and economic security concerns.

ISAACSON: One of the things that happened after the Ukraine invasion by Russia was a lot of economic sanctions on Russia. And we were told they could be crippling sanctions. And yet, I just saw that the IMF said that the Russian economy grew at 2.4 percent. Why have sanctions failed so badly?

GOPINATH: So, Russia’s economy has, indeed, surprised in terms of the strength of its growth. But that said, there is one piece that is clear, which is Russia’s economy is now a war economy. There is a large amount of military expenditure. There is a large amount of social transfers that are happening. And that, as we know, always tends to — will raise growth. We are actually seeing signs of an overheating economy with inflation going up. So, that is one important factor that has held up growth in Russia. They’ve also been able to continue to export oil the way they’ve done in the past. So, they’re getting a large amount of export revenues from oil, which have also helped them in terms of stabilizing their economy and growing their economy. But at the same time, we should recognize that they have lost, Russia has lost an important amount of human capital, as several of the high-skilled workers have left. They have a much harder time getting access to advanced technology. That affects their productive capacity. So going forward, our expectation is that this will weaken their growth in the medium-term.

ISAACSON: Some people have suggested that the West sees the assets of Russia, Russian banks that are held in the West and use that for Ukraine. Is that a good idea in your opinion?

GOPINATH: So, Walter, you know, we have a principle of neutrality. We don’t really get involved in these kinds of decisions about what to do with the frozen assets. We are following the developments closely. It is going to depend upon the relevant countries, those jurisdictions these assets are in to make a decision. That said, we will, of course, evaluate the impact of any action that is taken with these assets, the impact, for instance, for Ukraine, the impact for the rest of the world, and for the international monetary system. So, that’s where we come in.

ISAACSON: This is an election year 2024, not just in the United States, but a lot of countries. Are you worried that that could lead politically to a lot of domestic spending, increased domestic spending in countries, and this could destabilize the global economy?

GOPINATH: If you look at what’s happened in the past, there is a correlation between increased spending during election years. And so, you know, that would be a reasonable conjecture to have. You know, one of the points we have been making is we are now in a world where debt levels are very high. And we have many countries that whose fiscal deficits are too big, they’re spending much more than what their revenues are bringing in. So, it is our advice that this is actually now a time to consolidate on the fiscal front, to build up baffles, also because this is not going to be the last — you know, we’re not done with shocks. We’re going to see many more shocks going into the future. We’re also seeing interest rates going up. And interest rates likely will be higher than they were during that period right after the global financial crisis when everybody pushed interest rates down to rock bottom levels. You know, the interest rates at which governments are borrowing is going up, that will then crowd out necessary spending that they will have to do. So, it is our advice that now is the time to engage in fiscal consolidation and to rebuild buffers. But of course, to do this in a sensible manner, which is not to do everything up front, but to smooth it over time.

ISAACSON: The economy, which we thought was both having problems with inflation and might then lead to a recession, with the high interest rates that are being used, seems in the United States and in other places too, to have had what’s called a soft landing. In other words, the economy has done better than many economists thought. Is that true in the United States and around the world? And if so, what were the reasons for this soft landing?

GOPINATH: The global economy has been more resilient than many feared. And while we don’t have a soft landing yet, our expectation is that we will see soft landings. Again, that is our baseline. And the reason we expect to see soft landings is, one, that inflation has come down quite significantly in many parts of the world without needing, you know, a big increase in unemployment rates or a big drop in activity. So, without that, we have seen inflation coming down quite a lot. That gives us hope why you could end up with a soft landing. Now, there are several reasons why maybe we end up here. What we saw were a lot of supply chain disruptions during the pandemic and also the energy prices that went up during the war, those have unbound and that has helped everybody in bringing their inflation down. But we still have the last mile. And I want to flag that, is we do have the last mile in getting inflation back down to central bank targets. So, we’re not done. The approach of being cautious is the right one, which is what central banks are signaling, to be data dependent, and to see, you know, what happens to inflation with every reading. Now, I think we should be careful not to extrapolate from one data point and either have euphoria or to have panic from it. Our expectation is that inflation will continue to decline. It will be bumpy, but we expect that it will continue to decline, again, as long as policies are maintained at the right level.

ISAACSON: So, in other words, we shouldn’t rush into rate cuts right now.

GOPINATH: Our advice is to be cautious about it. And, you know, our best guess estimate, at this point, given the data that we have seen, is that rate cuts are more likely to as a second half of this year, both in the U.S. and in the Euro area. But again, one should update this depending upon what the data points to.

ISAACSON: Gita Gopinath, thank you very much.

GOPINATH: Thank you, Walter.