All of the above are steps in the right direction, if likely only the beginning of what it will take to prevent the coronavirus crisis from undoing the past two decades of progress in the world’s less developed countries, during which global poverty rates fell by more than 50 percent. Even as the United States, China, Europe and Japan are themselves reeling from public health and economic calamities, it is a moral imperative to help the developing countries and their people. It is also a matter of self-interest: We need healthy customers in emerging markets; the virus itself cannot be contained if developing countries must spend scarce resources on debt service rather than public health.

The impending global economic contraction, estimated by the IMF at 3 percent for 2020, catches emerging markets at the crest of what a December 2019 World Bank study called the fourth major “wave” of debt accumulation since the 1970s. Public- and private-sector debt rose by 54 percent of total output in the developing world, the study noted, and even though China’s own debts accounted for a disproportionate share of that increase, the buildup was broad-based, with the poorest countries’ debt nearly doubling from $137 billion in 2010 to $268 billion in 2018. “A sudden global shock . . . could lead to financial stress in more vulnerable economies,” the study noted.

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Prophetic — and understated — words. Crucially, China is not only a large borrower but a large lender, too. Beijing, seeking political influence in strategic regions around the world, has lent tens of billions of dollars to developing-country governments under less-than-transparent conditions. Yet, as African diplomats noted with dismay last week, apart from joining the modest new G-20 debt relief program, China has been much more reluctant than Western nations about large-scale debt renegotiation.

For its part, the Trump administration has supported both IMF efforts and the G-20 debt relief, while balking at the most aggressive proposed remedy under discussion: distribution of hundreds of billions worth of “special drawing rights” (SDRs) to IMF members, which debtor nations could swap for dollars and other hard currencies. The IMF created $250 billion worth of these instruments to ease the 2008-2009 recession; France has suggested doing twice that now. While stating publicly that too much of the benefit would go to rich countries, the Treasury Department told Group of Seven allies it did not want Iran and Venezuela to benefit from SDRs, as they inevitably would. But trying to punish Washington’s adversaries is a poor reason to deny desperately needed debt relief to the rest of the world.

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