How to Sell Global Re-Balancing
We keep hoping that somehow meetings of heads of state will magically produce the policies that will rebalance world trade. Unfortunately, the macroeconomic changes that countries must make involve actions to which even heads of state cannot commit, because there is virtually no domestic constituency to support and promote them.
CHICAGO – At its most recent meeting in Toronto this spring, the G-20 agreed to disagree. Even though the world economy is desperately in need of rebalancing, their declaration was deliberately vague enough to accommodate any set of domestic policies that countries might choose. Everyone came away thinking that they had won, but the world largely lost.