Midcoast Forum on Foreign Relations

Two Articles by Martin Mühleisen

Posted on Tuesday April 8 2025

“The IMF and World Bank did well under the first Trump administration. Will they again?,” by Martin Mühleisen, The Atlantic Council, December 3, 2024.

For the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank, the election of Donald Trump as US president in 2016 seemed to present an existential question. If their largest shareholder was going to be led by a tariff-wielding economic nationalist, what would it mean for the future of the multilateral financial architecture, of which they were a key part? The answer, it turned out, was more benign than what had been feared at the time. Like its predecessors, the Trump administration quickly realized that the two institutions provided the United States with financial leverage to pursue its global objectives, including by assisting friendly countries that would otherwise depend mostly on Chinese lenders for support…

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“The international role of the euro and the dollar: Forever in the lead?” by Martin Mühleisen, The Atlantic Council, September 27, 2022.

The international monetary system has been surprisingly resilient over the past two years, considering the size of pandemic and geopolitical shocks that hit markets during this period. Liquidity injections by the major central banks helped stabilize economic activity and avoid disruptions to capital flows or foreign exchange markets. Major exchange rates remained range-bound throughout most of the crisis, even if the dollar has appreciated sharply in recent months. Volatility is likely to pick up as monetary policy responds to high inflation, but there should be no doubt that the dollar-based monetary order has withstood a major test during the past two years.

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