Last month, the US National Security Advisor, Jake Sullivan, outlined the international economic policy of the US administration. This was a pivotal speech, because Sullivan explained what is called the New Washington Consensus on US foreign policy.

The original Washington Consensus was a set of ten economic policy prescriptions considered to constitute the “standard” reform package promoted forcrisis-wrackeddeveloping countriesby Washington, D.C.-based institutions such as the IMF, World Bankandthe US Treasury. The term was first used in 1989 by English economistJohn Williamson. The prescriptions encompassedfree-market promoting policies such as trade and finance ‘liberalisation’ and privatisation of state assets. They also entailed fiscal and monetary policies intended to minimise fiscal deficits and public spending. It was the neoclassical policy model applied to the world and imposed on poor countries by US imperialism and its allied institutions. The key was ‘free trade’ without tariffs and other…