Read the Lecture

Economic nationalism is resurgent. Yet as history shows, efforts to weaken interdependence with the world are unlikely to improve national wellbeing, or repair a fraying social fabric. Nor can we do without global cooperation to tackle the threats of climate change and future pandemics that spare no nation, or to enable AI to unleash gains across societies while averting its greatest dangers.

The rules-based economic order has to be reformed to remain alive, and help avoid a self reinforcing slide into global disorder. We must modernize the rules and decision-making conventions at the WTO and key UN bodies to avoid stasis; build open coalitions from around the globe, including among middle powers and smaller nations, to provide new scaffoldings for free and fair trade and cooperation on emerging challenges like AI and digital governance; and use innovative tools to mobilize vastly greater development finance for the regions with the world’s largest young populations. An open world economy will also depend on the US and China building a new understanding around each of their concerns, and stepping off a trajectory of ever-increasing conflict that will leave no winners. However, it must also rest, ultimately, on more coherent and robust domestic strategies, to revive communities displaced by technology and competition, and meet the desire of ordinary citizens everywhere to be included in prosperity.

Discussants: 

Dr. Moritz Schularick, President of the Kiel Institute for the World Economy 

Dr. Lael Brainard, Distinguished Fellow, Georgetown Psaros Center  

There will be a panel discussion after the lecture and the discussions, moderated by Dr. Raghuram Rajan.