Geopolitical shifts, economic and financial fragmentation – Volume 2. The era of restructuring

Under the co-direction of Bruno Cabrillac and Pierre Jaillet, issue 161 of the Revue d’économie financière is an extension of issue 160 on geopolitical shifts and their geoeconomic consequences. It is being published both in French and English.

The first volume (“The Era of Disruption”) analyzed the geoeconomic consequences of a systemic “polycrisis”, which has revealed the tensions arising from a phase of rapid globalization coupled with economic disruption. Issue 161 (“The Era of Restructuring”) examines the geoeconomic prospects of the new state of the world. Introduced by separate interviews with Enrico Letta and Arancha Gonzalez, it includes 13 articles, which have been divided into three chapters:

1. A prospective framework for the global geoeconomy in the 21st century

2. The restructuring of the international monetary and financial system

3. Global economic and financial governance: reinventing multilateralism

The role that Europe (and the euro) can and needs to play by stepping up its integration and by defending a broad set of international rules is a central theme of this volume.

The first chapter opens with an observation: based on the fundamentals, the United States could become more geoeconomically dominant in the coming decades. However, the policies implemented by the Trump administration - particularly on trade and immigration - could frustrate this dynamic.

The second chapter examines the restructuring of the international monetary and financial system. The evolving role of the dollar and of US assets - which could be bolstered by the development of stablecoins - is clearly at the heart of this restructuring. But the development of stablecoins could also destabilize US monetary policy and, beyond that, the international monetary system (IMS). So far, this restructuring has had limited consequences on international portfolio flows.

The third chapter begins with an assessment of the difficulties facing the multilateral order. Rules, institutions, and multilateral forums such as the G7 or the G20 have been compromised by the polycrisis situation and, above all, by Trump’s unilateralism. Even though multilateral cooperation has shown a certain resilience - for example, by preserving agreements on international taxation - it is no longer capable of meeting the challenges, particularly regarding the stewardship of global public goods. The obstacles to multilateral cooperation could be sidestepped, either through the coordination of policies less dependent on geopolitical choices - such as competition - or through coalitions of the willing involving non-state actors, as is being experimented with the COPs on climate and biodiversity.