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More than 80 years ago, officials from 44 countries met in New Hampshire and created a new world order. We stand on the brink of that being unwound, which would be a catastrophic mistake — not just for the smaller emerging economies that want a larger voice, but for the US economy itself, which has been the key beneficiary of the Bretton Woods agreement that came out of that conference.

The Trump administration is significantly reducing America’s role in the current system of multilateralism and even considering abandoning it entirely. In just its first few weeks, it quit the World Health Organization and the Paris Climate Agreement, shuttered USAID, imposed eye-watering tariffs on a wide swathe of trading partners, suspended funding to UN organizations, and initiated a 180-day review that may lead to the US quitting the two cornerstone institutions of the Bretton Woods system: the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank.

Business leaders should do all they can to convince the administration not to. While the system is far from perfect, it has been crucial to the decades-long success of corporate America and, increasingly, of companies and investors elsewhere. Much of its contribution has been the economic plumbing that business takes for granted: an exchange rate system centered on the US dollar that facilitates trade and investment; a crisis-management system that limits the fallout of financial crashes; development support that both opens up investment opportunities around the world and improves security and stability; and, more than anything, a forum in which mutually agreed rules can be made and monitored.

Business leaders should point out that the IMF and World Bank are not, as Project 2025 claims, “expensive middlemen,” but a fantastic deal for America. The US has to pay in only a fraction of its IMF quota — the pledges that underpin the organization — and gets remunerated for so doing. In 2023 the US actually gained $407 million from this arrangement.

The World Bank’s expenses are paid mostly out of income generated from lending to countries such as India, Turkey, Indonesia, Argentina, and the Philippines; it is, in that sense, a commercial bank. Its loans to the poorest countries rely on payments from wealthy countries, but over half of that money comes from Europe. And for all this, the US gets outsize influence in both organizations, guiding what they do and deciding who leads them. That ensures American interests are served.

“Business leaders should point out that the IMF
and World Bank are a fantastic deal for America.”

Equally, business leaders should encourage the Trump administration to think twice about trying to weaken the dollar through what’s being called a Mar-a-Lago Accord. The dollar’s status as the world’s reserve currency — though it’s been declining, it still accounts for 57% of known central bank reserves — is what allows the US to borrow and spend so freely. So too does other countries’ trade with America, which drives up demand for dollars.

The most likely mechanism for devaluing the dollar — strong-arming those countries into swapping their short-term Treasurys for century bonds — will unnerve creditors. Making it risky to hold US Treasurys and risky to trade with America will kill the golden goose — what former French President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing called the “exorbitant privilege” of being the world’s reserve currency.

The IMF and World Bank could carry on without the US. But instead of being headquartered a stone’s throw from the White House, they would be based in Japan, probably, or perhaps in Europe (if the EU countries were to sit as one chair, like in the World Trade Organization). In all likelihood, China would (again) look to seize some of the soft power being given up by the US by pumping in more money in exchange for greater institutional influence.

Much of the groundwork for a multilateral system without American leadership has already been done. Just look at the way emergency financing arrangements have sprouted across the world with no US participation, such as in the European Union, the BRICS+ countries, Latin America, Africa, and Asia. They haven’t dethroned the dollar, but that’s because the US government has protected it through sound policy and global engagement.

Business will adapt to this new world if it has to, but simultaneously straddling a highly politicized new Pax Americana and a bifurcated global financial system would greatly complicate life for multinational corporations. Their message to the Trump administration should be
that it’s far better to keep and improve upon the best bits
of today’s multilateralism than to abandon it.