Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent Remarks before the Institute of International Finance

As prepared for delivery.IntroductionThank you for that kind introduction. It’s an honor to be here. In the final months of World War II, Western leaders convened the greatest economic minds of their generation. Their task? To build a new financial system. At a quiet resort high up in the mountains of New Hampshire, they laid the foundation for Pax Americana. The architects of Bretton Woods recognized that a global economy required global coordination. To encourage that coordination, they created the IMF and the World Bank. These twin institutions were born after a period of intense geopolitical and economic volatility. The purpose of the IMF and the World Bank was to better align national interests with international order, thereby bringing stability to an unstable world.In short, their purpose was to restore and preserve balance. This remains the purpose of the Bretton Woods institutions. Yet everywhere we look across the international economic system today, we see imbalance.