WITH trade tensions undermining confidence and global growth, economic leaders are increasingly pushing each other to fix the shortcomings that fueled the disputes, International Monetary Fund (IMF) chief Kristalina Georgieva said Saturday.

As the United States and China remain engulfed in a tariff dispute and with Brexit turmoil continuing Saturday, trade overshadowed the discussions of finance officials gathered for the annual meetings of the IMF and World Bank.

Trade is typically an engine of economic growth. But the current disputes have created uncertainty and growth in international commerce has come to a virtual standstill, Georgieva said, noting that problems go beyond bilateral disagreements and extend to outdated trade rules.

“We need to look into what are the reasons we are not making more progress on trade and they are not just the relations between China and the United States,” Georgieva told reporters.

Among finance officials there was an understanding on “what are the issues that need to be addressed and building more, if you wish, peer pressure for everybody to play by the trade rule book.”

The IMF projects the Sino-U.S. trade dispute could shave US$700 billion off the global economy by next year, mostly by undercutting confidence and freezing business investment.

The IMF’s global growth estimate was revised downward to just 3 percent this year and a slightly better 3.4 percent in 2020.

South Africa’s central bank chief Lesetja Kganyago, who chairs the IMF steering committee, said the pain of the trade frictions are felt everywhere, as the uncertainty puts the brakes on investment.

“And because the investment is not taking place the economy is not growing, jobs are lost,” he told reporters. “The trade tensions are not in the best interest of the global economy.”

Despite being at the center of the conflict, US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said the fight for “fairer trade” is “preparing a foundation for future growth.”

Georgieva said countries must “be willing to expand and improve this (trade) rule book,” especially to include services and e-commerce which are not covered by traditional agreements for trade in goods, she said at the close of the IMF meetings.

Britain’s Finance Minister Sajid Javid assured officials in Washington that his country has taken steps to prepare for Brexit, whether or not they agree on a negotiated exit, but conversely also stressed the need to “reinvigorate multilateral cooperation.”

“We remain deeply concerned about the impact of trade tensions on the global economy, and on the rules-based trading system,” he said in a prepared statement.

(SD-Agencies)