The leaders of the 189-nation International Monetary Fund and its sister organization, the World Bank, are laying out their visions for the future, hoping to achieve a world with less extreme poverty and more economic growth.
However, IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva and World Bank President David Malpass will likely find their discussions over the next two days consumed with more immediate problems, such as rising trade tensions that have sapped world growth.
Both officials will deliver speeches at the opening session Friday of the annual meetings of the two organizations. Also Friday, Japanese Finance Minister Taro Aso will meet with reporters at the end of discussions among finance ministers and central bank governors from the Group of 20 major industrial nations.
World Bank President David Malpass speaks during a news conference at the World BankIMF Annual Meetings in Washington, Thursday, Oct. 17, 2019. (AP PhotoJose Luis Magana)
All the meetings, which are scheduled to conclude Saturday, are expected to be dominated by debate over the best way to cool rising trade tensions, which have seen the world's two biggest economies, the United States and China, impose punitive tariffs on billions of dollars of each other's exports.
The U.S.-China trade war has had ripple effects that have contributed to a significant, synchronized slowdown across 90% of the globe.
Meeting with reporters Thursday, Georgieva said a tentative U.S.-China trade agreement announced last week by President Donald Trump should lessen slightly the damage done by the trade war — but until the two nations resolved their differences, it would not remove enough uncertainty to return the globe to solid growth.
Georgieva said the tariffs still being imposed would result in 0.6% in lost global output by the end of 2020, down a bit from the 0.8% in lost output the IMF had initially estimated.
But she said that result was not good enough and what was needed was for the United States and China to resolve all their trade issues and for all countries to work together to modernize the rules of global trade to lessen friction in the future.
"Our hope is to move from a trade truce to a trade peace," she told reporters.
The IMF released an updated economic outlook Tuesday that projected global growth for this year at 3%. That would be the weakest showing since a negative 0.1% in 2009, in the wake of the worst financial crisis since the 1930s.
Georgieva, a Bulgarian economist who had held the No. 2 job at the World Bank, was tapped last month to take over at the IMF, succeeding Christine Lagarde.
In her news conference Thursday, she said she hoped this week's talks would focus on ways to ease trade tensions and begin the groundwork to update the rules of world trade. The Trump administration has repeatedly attacked the Geneva-based World Trade Organization, saying it is biased against the United States.
"We have been reaching agreements on trade based primarily on the past," she said. She noted that global commerce has been transformed in recent years by advances in technology, and those advances need to be acknowledged in new trade rules.
Malpass, who took over as head of the World Bank earlier this year, said his focus for the meetings will be efforts to ensure that everything possible is done to restart global growth, given that the 700 million people living in extreme poverty — one in 12 people on the planet — will be the most harmed by a prolonged slowdown.
"There is an urgency to what we're doing because of the challenges facing development," Malpass said. "Global growth is slowing, investment is sluggish, manufacturing activity is soft and trade is weakening."
In his announcement last week, Trump said he was suspending a tariff increase on $250 billion of Chinese products that had been scheduled to take effect this week.
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin told reporters Wednesday that the U.S. and Chinese negotiators were working to hammer out details on this "phase one" agreement.
He said he and U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer would speak by phone with Chinese Vice Premier Liu He, the head of the Chinese negotiating team, next week and planned to meet with him in Santiago, Chile, before the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation leaders' summit on Nov. 16-17.
It is expected that Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping will meet at that summit to sign the initial phase of the deal, if it is finalized by that time.
Mnuchin said the administration has made no decision yet on whether it will postpone 15% tariffs on $160 billion in Chinese goods still due to take effect Dec. 15.
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TRUMP TRIAL OPENING-AP EXPLAINS — Opening statements in Donald Trump’s hush money trial set the stage for weeks of testimony about the former president’s personal life and places his legal troubles at the center of his closely contested campaign against President Joe Biden. An AP reporter debrief. Newsroom Ready and Consumer Ready edits.
BIDEN-EARTH DAY — President Joe Biden marked Earth Day by announcing $7 billion in federal grants for residential solar projects serving households in low- and middle-income communities — while blasting Republicans who want to gut his policies to address climate change. Newsroom Ready and Consumer Ready edits.
President Joe Biden campaigns in Tampa, Florida. Events at 3 p.m. and 4:15 p.m.
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TRUMP-HUSH MONEY — A longtime tabloid publisher is expected to tell jurors about his efforts to help Donald Trump stifle unflattering stories during the 2016 campaign as testimony resumes in the historic hush money trial of the former president. David Pecker, the former National Enquirer publisher, will be back on the stand Tuesday. SENT: 1,160 words, photos, video. UPCOMING: 1,200 words after trial resumes at 9:30 a.m.
ELECTION 2024-TRUMP-ELECTION INTERFERENCE — Donald Trump faces serious charges in two separate cases over whether he attempted to subvert the Constitution by overturning the results of a fair election. Yet it’s a New York case centered on payments to silence an adult film star that might provide the only legal reckoning this year. Some legal experts are dubious about attempting to tie a record-keeping case to manipulating an election. SENT: 1,050 words, photos.
SUPREME COURT-TRUMP-CAPITOL RIOT-THINGS TO KNOW — The core issue being debated before the Supreme Court on Thursday boils down to this: Whether a former president is immune from prosecution for actions taken while in office — and, if so, what is the extent of the immunity? SENT: 1,070 words, photo.
ELECTION 2024-PENNSYLVANIA — Pennsylvania primaries on Tuesday will cement the lineup for a high-stakes U.S. Senate race between Democratic Sen. Bob Casey and Republican challenger David McCormick. Joe Biden and Donald Trump are expected to win their presidential nominations easily. SENT: 890 words, photos. Polls close at 8 p.m.
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TRUMP-HUSH MONEY — Donald Trump tried to illegally influence the 2016 presidential election by preventing damaging stories about his personal life from becoming public, a prosecutor told jurors at the start of the former president’s historic hush money trial. SENT: 1,270 words, photos, video. With TRUMP-HUSH MONEY-TAKEAWAYS — Opening statements provide a clear roadmap of how prosecutors will try to make the case that Trump broke the law, and how the defense plans to fight the charges.
BIDEN-EARTH DAY — President Joe Biden marked Earth Day by announcing $7 billion in federal grants for residential solar projects serving 900,000-plus households in low- and middle-income communities — while criticizing Republicans who want to gut his policies to address climate change. SENT: 860 words, photos.
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Former president Donald Trump, center, awaits the start of proceedings at Manhattan criminal court, Monday, April 22, 2024, in New York. Opening statements in Donald Trump's historic hush money trial are set to begin. Trump is accused of falsifying internal business records as part of an alleged scheme to bury stories he thought might hurt his presidential campaign in 2016. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura, Pool)
