IMF, World Bank, PIIE Slash Global Economic Growth Forecasts For 2025

Finance ministers from around the world will converge on Washington, D.C., this week for the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank (WB) Spring Meetings, as the Trump administration launches a flurry of negotiations with its trading partners, Walter Frick reported for Bloomberg Weekend.

Global economic expectations have deteriorated sharply since Trump’s April 2 “Liberation Day” tariff announcement.

But those bilateral talks are overshadowed by increasingly grim prospects for the global economy. For U.S. trade partners, the worsening global outlook matters—regardless of the severity of tariffs imposed by Washington.

“Many countries will be indirectly hit if U.S. tariffs substantially weaken the economic prospects of their trading partners,” said Karen Dynan, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE) and an economist at Harvard.

Global economic expectations have deteriorated sharply since Trump’s April 2 “Liberation Day” tariff announcement.

At a PIIE event last week, Dynan revised her 2025 global growth forecast down to 2.7% from 3.2%. Meanwhile, 82% of investors surveyed by Bank of America this month expect the global economy to weaken.

Goldman Sachs now forecasts year-over-year global GDP growth of just 1.4% in the fourth quarter—less than half the 3% pace recorded at the end of last year.