UN General Assembly
2020

They set up multilateral institutions, such as the United Nations. They created international financial institutions, such as the World Bank, the IMF and other Bretton Woods institutions. And they laid the foundations for a rules-based international order through which we enjoyed an unprecedented period of common prosperity in the second half of the twentieth century. We had a system — we had a generation — that learned from crisis and set us on a better path. In their era, those systems worked. But that was 50, 60, 70 years ago. Today, all those institutions no longer serve us well enough on what they were designed for — defending multilateralism and international law. Protecting human rights and open markets. That is what the crisis of COVID-19 has shown, beyond a shadow of a doubt. That things have to change. And not just on the world stage — but at home, too.