The United States did it again. Just a week before the United Nations Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development in Seville, the Trump administration walked out, pulling out of negotiations and refusing to attend the world’s most important conference for coordinating how countries finance sustainable development. It was a dramatic, if familiar, abdication of responsibility. And although the rest of the world adopted the Seville Commitment (Compromiso de Sevilla) outcome document by consensus, the result was far from bold.Wealthy creditor nations pushed back against a proposal to establish a meaningful UN-led process for addressing debt distress among lower-income countries. The document’s most ambitious provisions on debt triggered formal objections from the European Union, the United Kingdom, Japan, and others. Their resistance made it painfully clear that transformational change in the global financial system will not come with wealthy countries in charge. If low and middle-income countries are to secure the resources and policies they need to invest in their futures, they should take a page from rich countries’ playbook: organise into a club to protect their own interests.The global economy is held back by a destabilising disconnect between creditor-led promises and borrower realities. The poorest and most vulnerable countries paid a record $96 …
