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Donald Trump’s plans for greater tariffs, decrease taxes and curbs on immigration threat reviving inflation and stopping the Federal Reserve from reducing rates of interest, the IMF has warned.
Unveiling forecasts that predicted sooner than anticipated progress for the US economic system, the fund’s chief economist Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas stated the president-elect’s insurance policies may result in a mix of surging demand and shrinking provide which might “possible reignite US value pressures”.
He added in a weblog submit on Friday that “greater inflation would stop the Federal Reserve from reducing rates of interest and will even require fee hikes that might in flip strengthen the greenback and widen US exterior deficits”.
Gourinchas additionally warned that monetary deregulation — one other Trump precedence — may set off a “boom-bust cycle” if pushed too far.
The IMF elevated its 2025 progress forecast for the US economic system to 2.7 per cent from its earlier estimate of two.2 per cent, forward of all different G7 nations and near final 12 months’s 2.8 per cent.
In an replace to its World Financial Outlook, the fund additionally predicted the US would develop by 2.1 per cent in 2026, 0.1 of a degree greater than in its October forecasting spherical.
The expansion estimates, which come simply three days forward of Trump’s inauguration on Monday, don’t take account of coverage proposals from the incoming administration, which the IMF stated it couldn’t but incorporate in its forecasts.
The president-elect has laid out aggressive plans to impose blanket tariffs of as much as 20 per cent on all US imports, implement a crackdown on undocumented immigrants and enact sweeping tax cuts, prompting jitters in bond markets which can be cautious of inflation dangers and extreme deficits.
The fund referred to near-term “upside dangers” to the already “strong” US economic system, contrasting the power of America’s efficiency to different components of the world the place it sees dangers of a weaker than anticipated outlook.
The IMF’s central forecasts assume a continued easing of world inflation, allowing additional fee cuts in large economies. However the evaluation signalled components of Trump’s agenda may undermine efforts to subdue inflation.
The IMF stated greater tariffs or immigration curbs would ship unfavorable shocks to US provide, including to cost pressures. It added that proposed US insurance policies akin to looser fiscal coverage and deregulation would stimulate demand and enhance inflation within the close to time period.
The fund stated that whereas deregulation may enhance the US economic system’s capability over a half decade by eradicating crimson tape and stimulating innovation, there have been risks of going too far.
“There’s a threat that extreme deregulation may additionally weaken monetary safeguards and enhance monetary vulnerabilities, placing the US economic system on a harmful boom-bust path,” Gourinchas stated.
The IMF forecasts additionally highlighted the transatlantic divergence between the US and massive Eurozone economies.
The fund predicted that the area’s largest economic system, Germany, would develop by simply 0.3 per cent this 12 months, after two consecutive years of contracting output.
The broader Eurozone would develop by simply 1 per cent this 12 months — considerably slower than the 1.6 per cent forecast for the UK.
China’s economic system was now anticipated to develop by 4.6 per cent this 12 months — sooner than the IMF beforehand anticipated.
Gourinchas pressured that, ought to Beijing’s fiscal and financial measures fail to spice up demand, the Chinese language economic system was uncovered to a “debt-deflation-stagnation entice”, the place falling costs enhance the true worth of debt and undermine exercise.
The worldwide economic system was now anticipated to develop by 3.3 per cent each this 12 months and subsequent — barely above the October estimate however properly beneath its historic common of three.7 per cent, the IMF stated. Headline inflation was anticipated to ease from 4.2 per cent in 2025 to three.5 per cent in 2026.
However the fund famous the dangers of “policy-generated disruptions” to the method of taming inflation. “The chance of renewed inflationary pressures may immediate central banks to lift coverage charges and intensify financial coverage divergence,” the IMF stated. “Increased-for-even-longer rates of interest may worsen fiscal, monetary, and exterior dangers.”
Information visualisation by Keith Fray in London