The Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, IMF, Kristalina Georgieva, on Thursday urged countries to swiftly resolve trade disputes that threaten global economic growth.
Georgieva said the unpredictability arising from President Donald Trump’s aggressive campaign of taxes on foreign imports was causing companies to delay investments and consumers to hold off on spending.
She made the call while addressing reporters in a briefing during the spring meetings of the IMF and its sister agency, the World Bank.
“Uncertainty is bad for business,’’ she said.
Georgieva’s comments came two days after the IMF downgraded the outlook for world economic growth this year.
The 191-country lending organisations which seek to promote global growth, financial stability and to reduce poverty, also sharply lowered its forecast for the United States.
It said the chances that the world’s biggest economy would fall into recession have risen from 25 per cent, to about 40 per cent.
Georgieva warned that the economic fallout from the trade conflict would fall most heavily on poor countries, which do not have the money to offset the damage.
Trump, since his second return to the White House on January 20, has aggressively imposed tariffs on American trading partners.
Among other things, he slapped 145 per cent import taxes on China and 10 per cent on almost every country in the world, raising U.S. tariffs to levels not seen in more than a century.
He has, however, repeatedly changed US policy, suddenly suspending or altering the tariffs.
This has reportedly left companies bewildered about what he is trying to accomplish and what his endgame might be.
Trump’s tariffs culminated in a sharp reversal of decades of U.S. policy in favour of free trade and the resulting uncertainty around them have caused a week-long rout in financial markets.
But stocks rallied Wednesday, after the Trump administration signaled that it was open to reducing the massive tariffs on China.
“There is an opportunity for a big deal here,” U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Wednesday.
Resolve trade tensions inimical to global economic growth – IMF tells countries
