This increased the competitiveness of Chinese and Japanese items and made exports from Southeast Asia more expensive since their currencies were still pegged to the rising US dollar. Exports from the area quickly lost their competitiveness and ceased their earlier steady growth. Thailand, for instance, went from a 25 per cent growth in merchandise exports in 1995 to zero development in 1996. Export growth was also affected by economic slowdown in Europe and Japan and by rising US textile imports from Mexico following the signing of the North America Free Trade Agreement .

The two United Nations agencies released a new joint report addressing the impact of the pandemic on health, the economy and social growth in Latin America and the Caribbean. The gas crunch is one other instance of utmost events—this time soaring fuel prices—exposing vulnerabilities in advanced systems. The Financial Times columnist Izabella Kaminska compares the results of rising gas costs to the 2008 monetary disaster. When faced with a rare shock the monetary system, which was thought to be highly environment friendly, proved frail. Like the financial disaster and the pandemic, the fuel crunch highlights the primacy of resilience over effectivity in a crisis. More than a …