The new face on Pennsylvania Avenue’s only been on the job for a couple of months. Give him a few more and he’ll sound like a seasoned free-trading bureaucrat, sayeth a seasoned free-trading bureaucrat from up the block.

"We should give people who are coming to a new position without a lot of experience, or a little bit of outdated experience, the time to adjust," Lagarde said at an event in Frankfurt shortly before attending a meeting of G20 financial leaders.

Give Protectionists Time to Fit in, Says IMF’s Lagarde [NYT]