Member Views

Offensive Friendshoring and Deteriorating US-China Relations

BWC member Hung Tran writes for the Atlantic Council that "the increasingly offensive use of an offensive US friendshoring policy will make it more challenging to manage US-China strategic competition, and make a military conflict—with disastrous global consequences—more not less likely."

Ongoing Erosion of the Global Economic Order Will Sow More Conflict and Yield No Winners

The successful crafting of the Bretton Woods global economic architecture at the end of WWII followed decades of monumental destruction, bloodshed, and misery.

Only the U.S. and China Can Stave off Debt Disaster

There’s one area where the U.S. and China can and should cooperate immediately, however: to head off a looming debt crisis that threatens to hurl millions into poverty.

Op-ed: The four big threats to China’s economy

We should all care what happens in China, because it will affect us all. Economic dangers and Chinese President Xi Jinping’s responses to them will affect China first and foremost — but trouble in China could spell trouble everywhere this year and next. The world is rightly focused on the atrocities being committed by Russia in Ukraine, and China’s choice to stand with Russia is straining globalization’s links. But China’s economic challenges go beyond the war. Threats to China’s outlook are rising in four distinct but overlapping areas: at home, in health, in debt, and in a fracturing globe.

OPINION: Afghanistan’s neighbours recast refugee finance formula

The US airlift of Afghanistan refugees drew parallels most notably to its post-Vietnam predecessor four decades ago, and the country’s displacement crisis has lingered among the world’s longest running and biggest at 5mn before the Taliban’s return to power. It follows the Syria and Venezuela exoduses, also of historic proportions, with international aid delivery chronically half short of pledges, and private investors grappling with economic and financial implications when market performance was not a reference in the immediate aftermath.

Opinion: How Can DFIs Do More to Help MSMEs Survive Covid-19?

The global scale of the COVID-19 crisis threatens micro-, small-, and medium-sized enterprises, which dominate employment around the world — especially in lowest-income countries.

Outlook 2021: Biden Must Adopt Multilateral Tactics for China Policy

Relations between the US and China will remain fraught, albeit more diplomatic

P.R.I.M.E. Finance Panel Appointment

BWC member William Jannace has been newly appointed to the P.R.I.M.E. Finance Panel, a panel of legal and financial experts in the documentation, law, and market practice for derivatives and other complex financial products.

Pandemic Requires Comprehensive Debt Standstills

Emerging-market economies must be allowed to defer all payments to international creditors — official and private — for at least one year.

The Covid-19 pandemic is a one-two financial punch for developing economies.

Perceived Versus Real Risk In African Credit Ratings

The ratings of African governments have allowed a robust Eurobond market for African sovereign bonds with over $300 billion issued in the last couple of decades. Maintaining access to this market has persuaded many African countries not to seek debt relief under the misconceived G-20 Common Framework (CF) which only three countries have filed to use – Zambia, Ethiopia and Chad -- and none of them has an agreement yet two years after the CF was announced.