Donald Trump’s imposition of tariffs on imports threatens to knock almost 15 per cent off global growth by 2020, the IMF warned on Monday, adding that financial markets were complacent in the face of new risks.
The IMF currently thinks the global economy is set to expand 3.8 per cent in 2020. But the fund projected that global growth could be 0.5 percentage points lower by that point if all the threatened trade measures were implemented with a knock-on impact on business confidence in the US.
Updating its April economic forecasts, the fund cut growth outlook for many countries to reflect weakness in the first quarter of this year, but warned that these cuts would be much worse if the US tariffs already imposed turn into a full trade war.