Hello and welcome to NewsHour, live from the BBC World Service in London.
I'm Rebecca Kesby.
And we begin with the news that the International Monetary Fund has slashed its forecast for global growth.
The IMF is an international organisation funded by 191 member states.
It was formed in the wake of World War II and today its chief economist, Pierre-Olivier Gorinchas,
said the IMF now predicts the global economy will grow by only two The landscape has changed
since our last World Economic Outlook update in January.
We're entering a new era as the global economic system that has operated for the last 80 years is being reset.
Since late January, Many tariff announcements have been made,
culminating on April 2nd with near universal levies from the United States and counter-responses from some trading partners.
Beyond the abrupt increase in tariffs,
the surge in policy uncertainty is a major driver of the economic outlook.
If sustained, the increase in trade tensions and uncertainty will slow global growth significantly.
Mr Gorinchas said that the US economy itself could be the worst affected.
For the United States,
the tariffs represent a supply shock that reduces productivity and output permanently and increases price pressures temporarily.
This adds to an already weakening outlook and leads us to revise growth down by 0.9 percentage point.
to 1.8%, with a 0.4 percentage point downgrade from the tariffs only,
while inflation is revised upwards.
And he went on to say that the chances that the US economy would go into recession had been significantly increased.