Global | What was said and left unsaid at the IMF meetings

The Annual Meetings of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank revealed a broad consensus on the extraordinary resilience of the global economy, which continues to grow at a healthy pace despite geopolitical conflicts, rising oil prices and inflation, monetary tightening, and trade fragmentation.

Healthy corporate and household balance sheets, along with fiscal stimulus, have supported growth. But it is the investment associated with artificial intelligence (AI) that is providing an extraordinary boost to demand through spending on data centers, semiconductors, energy, and infrastructure, as well as elevated stock market valuations that are stimulating investment and consumption.

Indeed, AI dominated the conversations: from confidence in its transformative potential to questions about when, and to what extent, that potential will translate into higher productivity; from the uneven impact across countries and sectors to the possibility of a correction in stock market valuations, potentially compounded by rising long-term interest rates. Looming in the background was the fear of a major cybersecurity incident.

Governments and central banks have doubts about the sustainability of growth as they are concerned that, should something go wrong—whether a stock market correction, a fiscal crisis in a particular country, or a new geopolitical shock—economic policy will have less room to respond. Fiscal policy is constrained by high deficits and rising borrowing costs, while monetary policy faces the limitations imposed by the current high-inflation environment. Without being complacent, private-sector analysts are more optimistic about the economy's resilience.

But what surprised me most was what went unsaid—or received little attention.

There was hardly any discussion of the imbalances in the United States, with its large fiscal deficits and growing financing needs, or in China, which is still grappling with the fallout from the bursting of its real estate bubble and remains overly dependent on investment and exports, with insufficient consumption and an extraordinary external surplus. These imbalances are different, yet closely interconnected. The private sector discussed these issues extensively, but the IMF barely put them on the table during this year's meetings.

Perhaps the strength of U.S. investment provides grounds for taking a relatively relaxed view of the country's external deficit. Nevertheless, the sustainability of that investment depends on whether it generates sufficient returns. And China's excess production capacity will not disappear as long as its policies continue to favor production over consumption and reinforce the absolute competitive advantages of its products across the board. This is a major global problem that the IMF has largely sidestepped.

Nor did the global institutions directly address the consequences of U.S. tariffs or climate change, which, when the subject came up, was overshadowed by energy security. Stablecoins, which had featured more prominently in previous meetings, also received less attention. AI seems to be crowding out some fundamental structural questions.

There is one final issue that received less attention than it deserved: national security concerns, technological competition, and the pursuit of strategic autonomy are increasingly driving investment decisions. Companies and governments want to reduce dependencies, diversify suppliers, secure access to critical inputs, and gain control over key points in value chains. All reasonable goals, but costly ones.

Faced with these higher costs, companies will seek efficiencies—or they will need to pass the costs on to consumers, achieve greater scale to spread them more widely, or gain access to new markets. Governments will respond with subsidies, tariffs, trade restrictions, or tax incentives in a race for economic security that will increase frictions. That is why it is so important for AI to start delivering higher productivity soon.

Other negative externalities have also been largely absent from the debate. Duplicating production capacity, maintaining alternative suppliers, or securing supplies under multiple scenarios requires investments that are difficult to justify on economic returns alone. There is a risk of overinvestment—and of underinvestment in other sectors.

Industrial policy and government intervention are playing an increasingly important role. That is why we should be equally concerned about the quality of government intervention.

Press article. Published in Expansión on October 23, 2026.