Better growth in China, the euro zone and Japan is making up for a slower-than-expected US economy and Donald Trump’s stalled economic promises as well as a faltering UK, the International Monetary Fund said on Monday.
In its latest update, the IMF left its April forecasts for 3.5 per cent global growth this year and 3.6 per cent next year unchanged. But the lack of change in the world’s headline growth masked what the IMF said was a rotation in the sources of growth.
The IMF began this year predicting that Mr Trump’s arrival in Washington would lead to a fiscal stimulus equivalent to 2 per cent of gross domestic product in the US that would help boost global growth. A failure by the Trump administration and Republicans in Congress to advance tax reform and infrastructure plans, however, led the Fund last month to downgrade its predictions for US growth this year and next to 2.1 per cent from 2.3 for 2017 and 2.5 for 2018.