World breathes sigh of relief as Trump spares Fed, IMF

Global policymakers gathering in Washington last week breathed a collective sigh of relief that the US-centric economic order that prevailed for the past 80 years was not collapsing just yet, despite US President Donald Trump's inward-looking approach.

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WASHINGTON -

The spring meetings of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank were dominated by trade talks, which also brought some de-escalatory statements from Washington about its relations with China.

But some deeper questions hovered over central bankers and finance ministers after Mr Trump's attacks on international institutions and the Federal Reserve: Can we still count on the US dollar as the world's safe haven and on the two lenders that have supported the international economic system since the end of World War II?

Conversations with dozens of policymakers from all over the world revealed generalised relief at Mr Trump's scaling back of his threats to fire Fed chairman Jerome Powell, the guardian of the US dollar's international status whom he previously described as a "major loser".

And many also saw a silver lining in US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent's call to reshape the IMF and World Bank according to Mr Trump's priorities, because it implied that the US was not about to pull out of the two lenders that it helped create at the Bretton Woods conference of 1944.