Jens Weidmann: Continental drift? - Transatlantic economic relations in turbulent times

Speech by Dr Jens Weidmann, President of the Deutsche Bundesbank and Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Bank for International Settlements, at the Council on Foreign Relations, New York City, 16 October 2019.

The views expressed in this speech are those of the speaker and not the view of the BIS.

Introduction

Richard Haass,
Steven Sokol,
John Lipsky,
Ladies and gentlemen,

If our meeting had taken place 200 million years ago, my journey to New York would have been rather short. At that time, all of the land masses on Earth were joined together in the super-continent of Pangaea, including North America and Europe. And New York City, the spot where we are meeting today, would have been at the very heart of our common continent.

Tectonic plate shifts caused Pangaea to break apart and created the world as we now know it. Since then, North America and Europe have been separated by the Atlantic Ocean. Indeed, our continents keep drifting apart by about one inch every year. Unfortunately, this may be true in the figurative sense as well: when it comes to the matter of mutual understanding on both sides of the Atlantic, the gap appears to be expanding rather than contracting.

But there is a big difference between geology and geopolitics: while the continental drift between the United States and Europe cannot be slowed or halted, the political distance between them is neither inevitable nor irreversible. To bridge the divides, we have to talk to each other. That is why events like today's - and the activities by the Council on Foreign Relations and the American Council on Germany in general - are so important.