Into the Post-Pandemic : On the New World Orders and their Would-Be Architects

The pandemic-triggered economic crisis has served to merge, amplify and accelerate changes driven by the anti-globalization movement, the US trade and technology war on China, the digital transformation, and the Anthropocene. Existing business models that might have been able to withstand individual shocks are now collapsing from the merged shocks. As the world moves to recovery, the “solution space” to which the economy is being pushed will look different from the one disrupted by the pandemic. What we produce and how will change, and by extension so will how this production is shared internationally and exchanged through the trading system, and indeed how the system is governed. Moreover, the major economies have been asymmetrically impacted by these various shocks and face important political transitions in 2021, with the Biden Administration taking office and resetting US policies, and the European Union splintering with Brexit. It has been argued that the world needs another Bretton Woods moment to reset the international institutional framework to make it fit for purpose for the age of change that is upon us. However, this note argues that, to get to a second Bretton Woods moment, we first need a second Yalta moment, in this case with the United States and China agreeing on the terms of a detente to buy time for the groundwork for a viable framework for the post-pandemic economy to be set out