Economic leaders face a new era of industrial policy

Policymakers brace for more protectionism and demise of 'neoliberalism' if Trump is re-elected in the US

- ALAN RAPPEPORT

At the annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank this week, Kristalina Georgieva, the head of the IMF, expressed a mix of relief and trepidation about the state of the world economy.

Policymakers had tamed rapid inflation without causing a global recession. Yet another big economic problem loomed. Rising protectionism and thousands of new industrial policy measures enacted by countries over the last year are threatening future growth prospects.

"Trade, for the first time, is not the engine of growth," Georgieva said at a Bretton Woods Committee event.

Eighty years after the IMF and the World Bank were created to stabilize the global economy in the wake of World War II, the role of those organizations and the guiding principles has fallen out of fashion. But today, those who espouse such 'neoliberal' notions of open markets are increasingly lonely voices.