Stunned resignation A week in Trump's shadow at the IMF in Washington

A week in Trump's shadow at the IMF in Washington

- Heather Stewart

Kristalina Georgieva's favourite film is Tom Hanks's cold war romp Bridge of Spies, the International Monetary Fund boss told the audience at a packed panel event in Washington on Thursday.

In one of the stranger digressions in an often strange week, Georgieva recalled the moment when Hanks's character, a US lawyer, tells the Soviet spy he has been appointed to defend that he will probably be executed. "You don't seem alarmed," Hanks says to him; to which the spy - played by Mark Rylance - replies: "Would it help?"

Georgieva mentioned it to underline the fact that this week's spring meetings of the IMF and World Bank were not swept up in panic, despite the mayhem emanating from Donald Trump's administration. Instead, many of the hundreds of policymakers present have reacted with a kind of stunned resignation.

The US president was barely mentioned by name at the scores of public events where policymakers chewed over how to respond to the challenges thrown up by his chaotic tariffs. Georgieva spoke of "major trade policy shifts", which had "spiked uncertainty off the charts".