KRISTALINA GEORGIEVA

The IMF managing director on the future of trade and AI

- BY JUSTIN WORLAND

You've said recently that “uncertainty is the new normal.” What do you mean by that? We are experiencing the simultaneous impact of multiple transformative forces: geopolitics, technology, demography, climate. They all are accelerating the transformation of the world economy—the way we live, the way we work, the way we interact with each other. And the impact of this transformation is more fog within which we operate, more uncertainty.

With regard to trade, you have noted that trade continues to be “an engine of growth” even amid all of this year’s disruption. Do you think that we're out of the woods? No. This is a story that is still to be written. We have left one equilibrium that we knew, one in which trade was guided by globally acceptable rules, and we are moving towards possibly a new equilibrium. But we are not there yet.