Last week, as the UN General Assembly met in New York, I moderated an event with a group of well-known economists and foreign affairs experts on the effects of the US election on the future of multilateralism.

Everyone agreed that Donald Trump would be a disaster for global co-operation, and that Kamala Harris was a bit of an unknown quantity. The most interesting takeaway, however, was that participants were less interested in how America would engage with the world than where the world would go with or without the US.  

While it sometimes seems that policymakers and business leaders are breathlessly waiting, plans on hold, to see what happens in November, it’s perhaps truer to say that they are making peace with a world in which the US is not an anchor for stability, but rather a risk to be hedged against.