The Aftermath of the 2025 IMF Spring Meetings
“Trade policy uncertainty is off the charts”. That was how the Managing Director of the IMF, Kristalina Georgieva, described the backdrop of the Spring Meetings this year. The degree of policy uncertainty given the announcement of tariffs, the retaliatory measures and the consequent trade war with China, created a challenging environment and the mood among officials was of palpable worry. This is, perhaps, what led to significant difficulty and hefty obstacles during negotiations, and which ultimately undermined the institution’s perceived ability to make any significant progress last week. Once again, questions on the direction of diplomacy and global economic governance structures have arisen.
Prior to the meetings: forecasts, theme and goals
Although hard to believe, the official theme of last week’s IMF Spring Meetings was ‘Jobs- The Path to Prosperity’ (International Intrigue, 2025). However, it was tremendously overshadowed by talks of Trump’s tariffs and the deterioration of the global economic outlook. The World Economic Outlook published by the IMF just before the meetings, concluded that global growth forecasts were expected to fall. It also detailed a long list of economic consequences of the changing global landscape, shifting policy positions and overall growing uncertainty (IMF, 2025).
The report outlined underperformance in key economic indicators and slightly negative projections. Global growth was adjusted downwards, from 3.3% to 2.8%. The US was given a higher risk of recession (from 25% to 37%) and China’s growth rate projections also fell to 4% from 5%. Furthermore, inflation was revised upwards by 0.1% (International Intrigue, 2025).
The goals of the meetings therefore included relieving the tariff tension through increased cooperation in trade, more collaboration to reduce policy uncertainty, and addressing the pressing unresolved issue of comprehensive debt relief (Ribbert, 2025).
Key discussions and limited success
What was most covered in discussions were, of course, the impact of tariffs and escalating trade tensions. Informal efforts to reduce trade barriers and adverse impacts on emerging markets were attempted (IMF, 2025).
For emerging and developing countries, priorities for discussions were: maintaining aid commitments, institutional governance reform (IMF quota, World Bank shareholder review), reducing World Bank loan costs for middle-income countries, and improving debt treatment frameworks (Ellmers, 2025).
Discussions also encompassed the key issues of financing and debt, and most progress was on this topic, even if just superficial, as discussed below.
Artificial Intelligence, as one of the topics that was most highlighted prior to the meetings, was mostly discussed theoretically or through the lens of individual national strategies.
Similarly, climate initiatives also received more importance prior to the meetings than during. While they received support from key countries, US criticism continued to emerge and debate on gas and nuclear was still high (Ellmers, 2025).
Several limited outputs and proposals resulted, despite not amounting to any significant progress (Ellmers, 2025):
The proposals of Debt Relief for Resilience and Global South Debtors’ Coalition were pushed
The Report of the Expert Review on Debt, Nature and Climate was launched
The Global Sovereign Debt Roundtable released a Restructuring Playbook as well as its 4th Co-Chairs’ Report
Lack of agreements
However, for each of these reports, calls for action and proposals, there was not a single formal consensus or agreement.
A shocking development of these Meetings was that there was no usual Communiqué from bodies like the IMFC, the G20 finance ministers or the Development Committee, like in previous years (Ellmers, 2025). Instead, what stuck out was the vagueness on the degree of agreement that was reached, highlighted by the following G20 statement: “Many urged the need to reaffirm our commitment to multilateralism and a rules-based global trading system and renewed efforts to restore cooperation”. In effect, the rest of the statement contained the same negligible amount of substance (Ellmers, 2025).
Are IMF meetings obsolete?
It is evident that policy shifts, geopolitical uncertainty and trade fragmentation are becoming harder and harder to escape and mask at these international forums. The IMF’s stance of “keep calm and carry on” at the start of the week, while a good attempt at stability, seems to have been an insufficient strategy against the magnitude of the shocks and increased global uncertainty. Critics would go further, to say that it is these multilateral institutions and governance frameworks themselves that have become obsolete in the face of this increasingly volatile world.
All in all, diplomatic successes seem to be moving away from meetings in international institutions like the IMF and more towards unilateral treaties, regional agreements, and impromptu chats in St. Peter’s Basilica.
References:
Ellmers, B. (2025, April 28). 2025 Spring Meetings of the IMF and World Bank: Keep calm and carry on? Global Policy Forum. Retrieved from https://www.globalpolicy.org/en/news/2025-04-28/2025-spring-meetings-imf-and-world-bank-keep-calm-and-carry
IMF. (2025, April 26). Daily Briefing: Spring Meetings | April 25. IMF. Retrieved from https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/daily-briefing-spring-meetings-april-25-international-monetary-fund-dfwoe/
IMF. (2025). IMF Daily Briefing: Spring Meetings | April 22. Daily Briefing. Retrieved from https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/imf-daily-briefing-spring-meetings-april-22-v1vae/
IMF. (2025, April 24). IMF Daily Briefing: Spring Meetings | April 23. Retrieved from https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/imf-daily-briefing-spring-meetings-april-23-gsn7e/
IMF. (2025, April 25). IMF Daily Briefing: Spring Meetings | April 24. IMF. Retrieved from https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/imf-daily-briefing-spring-meetings-april-24-pocoe/
IMF. (2025). World Economic Outlook: A Critical Juncture amid Policy Shifts. World Economic Outlook. Retrieved from https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WEO/Issues/2025/04/22/world-economic-outlook-april-2025
International Intrigue. (2025, April 25). Is the IMF dead? International Intrigue. Retrieved from https://www.internationalintrigue.io/newsletters/international-intrigue/issue/%F0%9F%8C%8D-is-the-imf-dead/
Ribbert, S. (2025, April 29). Navigating Uncertainty: Debt Relief and Reform at the 2025 IMF–World Bank Spring Meetings. DRDG. Retrieved from https://drgr.org/news/navigating-uncertainty-debt-relief-and-reform-at-the-2025-imf-world-bank-spring-meetings/
Written by Laura Rebollo
