WASHINGTON, D.C. — Vitor Gaspar, the former Portuguese finance minister who leads the IMF’s fiscal affairs department, heard something in the tone of my questions about his latest fiscal monitor that made him come to the defence of Canada’s finance ministers. 

“I think you are too harsh on your own country,” Gaspar said. “That is, if you look at Canada in the context with which it can compare itself—say, other G7 countries or other advanced economies—it does seem to me that by and large, Canada looks good.” 

Blame a certain opposition leader’s drumbeat of “fix the budget” and all the clanging of pots over higher capital gains taxes. In February, I wrote that Canada had problems bigger than the deficit. And yet here I was, emphasizing the negative. When the air is toxic, everyone gets sick. 

I talked to Gaspar this week ahead of the annual meetings of the IMF and the World Bank. There’s always a lot going on at these meetings. The IMF releases its world economic outlook and global financial stability report, along with Gaspar’s fiscal monitor. Finance ministers, central bank governors and various hangers-on from 191 member countries arrive for private meetings, public panel discussions and non-stop networking. 

The mood in Washington was grim, when it should have been celebratory. 

Inflation is now under control and interest rates are falling. The global economy is in decent shape, a victory for globalization. That’s at least in part thanks to the IMF’s practice of circulating advice among its members, and the way policymakers use the global institutions to compare notes. Yet almost everyone in Washington was preoccupied with the U.S. election and what it could mean for that country’s rivalry with China. 

On Thursday, I found myself listening to IMF managing director Kristalina Georgieva in one ear and Gene Sperling, Kamala Harris’s senior economic adviser, in the other. Sperling, a veteran of several Democratic administrations, was on stage at the annual meeting of the Institute of International Finance, a lobby of the world’s biggest financial institutions. The moderator was taking his time getting Sperling to say something interesting, so I started watching the webcast of Georgieva’s opening press conference. 

Georgieva insisted there is “ample evidence” that when nations co-operate, “we all do better.” She said that’s especially true during periods of heightened uncertainty, citing the COVID-19 pandemic as the most recent example. 

We could be on the verge of another such period. There were two major headlines from the U.S. election last week: Donald Trump fits the definition of a fascist and expressed admiration for the loyalty of Nazi generals, according to John Kelly, the retired Marine general who also served as Trump’s chief of staff; and Trump is set to win on Nov. 5, according to most poll trackers. “People need to wake up and smell the economic chaos that could be coming!” Sperling said, when asked why the bankers in the room should vote for Harris.

There are other sources of chaos. Climate change, war, record levels of debt, stagnant economic growth and the disruptive potential of artificial intelligence represent current dangers. Anne Richards, vice-chair of Fidelity International, said at the IIF conference on Friday that she had never seen so many potential triggers for crisis simmering simultaneously.  

All have an international dimension, so geopolitics will determine whether the ending is happy or sad. That’s why the prospect of an alleged fascist and proven protectionist running the White House is paralyzing. At the time of the Second World War, the U.S. chose to create the global economic order in which we live. It could now choose to destroy it. 

“Coming from a small open economy, that is the part that I fear the most—if we lost the anchor of the system,” Laura Alfaro, a former Costa Rican economy minister and now a Harvard University business professor, said at an event on Thursday. 

Georgieva and World Bank president Ajay Banga have been using the 80th anniversary of the creation of their institutions to try to reinspire a commitment to globalization. 

In September, they took a group of scholars and officials to Bretton Woods, the New Hampshire resort where officials from the U.S. and Britain (with input from 42 other countries, including Canada) agreed on a system of international economic and financial co-operation. There was a great deal of hope then for what the IMF and the World Bank could achieve. “During the tempestuous 20 years between the wars we all fell far short of achieving that freedom from want which we now recognized as of the new rights of man,” Robert Bryce, an official in the Canadian Finance Department, wrote in a memo in 1941. “We must do better after this war—if our civilization is to survive.”

Battered globalists continue to believe our better angels will win the day. The group photo that Georgieva shared on social media from their retreat showed the modern keepers of the Bretton Woods legacy gathered under a double rainbow that emerged after a break in the weather. “The multilateral institutions have been very influential,” Bank of Canada governor Tiff Macklem said at a press conference in Washington on Friday. “There was a strong consensus, particularly in a shock-prone world and a more fragmented world, we’re going to need [these institutions] more than ever.”  

Preserving them, and the spirit of co-operation they represent, will require more than wishing on rainbows—especially if Trump wins the election. But let’s end on a positive note. The IMF and the World Bank were created as answers to the economic failures that preceded the First and Second World Wars. If global institutions had been in place in the 1920s, maybe history would have been different. Impossible to know, but let’s hope they prove equal to this moment. 

Kevin Carmichael is The Logic’s economics columnist and editor-at-large. He has spent more than two decades covering economics, business and finance for outlets including Bloomberg News, The Globe and Mail and the Financial Post, where he also served as editor-in-chief.