Think7 Summit: Canada 2025

Apr. 1 – 8:00 a.m. EDT (UTC–04:00): In early April, CIGI is hosting the Think7 (T7) Summit, a two-day hybrid event.

The T7 Summit will bring together a diverse group of global experts, policy makers and thought leaders for strategic discussions that will inform policy recommendations for the G7. The in-person component of the meetings is by invitation only, but virtual attendance is open to all. Virtual attendees will have full access to all plenary sessions and can participate in Q&As and discussions.

Learn more about the T7’s work, themes and the latest summit agenda, and register to receive virtual connection details.

The blending of traditional military threats or hostilities with below-threshold attacks has created a 360-degree threat environment where every form of national power is a potential weapon and nearly everything is a potential target. Hostile states have undercut the power advantage that secured the United States and its allies by amassing coercive military and economic power. Economic warfare has been central to their success.

With deterrence failing, the United States is readying itself for the prospect of today’s economic war sliding into hot war between major powers. To secure itself, it will act unilaterally in defence of its own national interests, including at the expense of its allies and partners.

In this policy brief, the second as part of CIGI’s Canada at Economic War project, Raquel Garbers argues that securing Canada in this threat environment requires action on three fronts: maximizing Canada’s strategic leverage in relations with allies and adversaries alike; uniting Canadians behind the defence of Canada; and making Canadians active partners in that defence.

The US dollar has long enjoyed preferential status as the world’s dominant medium of exchange, unit of account and store of value. The United States reaps benefits from its financial exceptionalism, but, James A. Haley writes, these benefits may now be at risk.

“It would be folly to rule out the possible loss of financial exceptionalism. And as the 2008 financial crisis amply demonstrated, financial markets can leverage a small risk...into a catastrophic meltdown of global financial markets. In this respect, though the risk of this scenario is speculative and uncertain, what is apparent and certain is that Trump constitutes a threat to the institutions and policy frameworks on which American financial exceptionalism rests.”

“South of the Rio Bravo, US President Donald Trump is feared, except when it comes to Javier Milei, Argentina’s libertarian president. Milei is counting on Trump to sway the International Monetary Fund (IMF) into lending fresh money to its largest debtor, Argentina, which owes it US$44 billion.”

In this op-ed first published by the Official Monetary and Financial Institutions Forum, Hector Torres takes a look at Milei’s approach to taming inflation using a strategy that “bears a familiar risk.” While Milei may be betting on his ally to sway the IMF, overcoming the Fund’s “technical reservations about Argentina’s exchange rate policy will demand more than just Trump’s influence.” Further, “Milei’s pledge of loyalty to the United States may not be enough. Securing Trump’s support may come at a price.”

In episode 12 of the Policy Prompt podcast, hosts Vass Bednar and Paul Samson welcome artist and thinker Amanda Wasielewski to discuss the crossover and interplay between digital and capital-A art.

Wasielewski, an associate senior lecturer of digital humanities and associate professor (docent) of art history in the Department of Archives, Libraries, and Museums at Uppsala University in Sweden, has exhibited her artwork internationally and recently published the monograph Computational Formalism: Art History and Machine Learning (MIT Press, 2023) and co-edited Critical Digital Art History: Interface and Data Politics in the Post-Digital Era, with Anna Näslund (University of Chicago Press, 2024). Amanda brings an art historian perspective to questions of data politics, including categorization, authentication, nuances lost in automation, the need to be able to see data sets, and both the fears and the artistic potential surrounding generative technologies.