Why The World’s Economic Forecasters Arent Panicking Over Tariff Wars

Global economic forecasts stable.

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The global economy will suffer only a little from the current tariff turmoil, according to the average economist forecasting major countries. Back in December, world economic growth had been expected to run 2.8% in 2025 and 2.9% in 2026. As of June 2025, expectations have dropped only to 2.5% and 2.6%.

Latest forecast only a little lower than 6 months ago.

Dr. Bill Conerly using data from FocusEconomics.com

To understand what professional economists see for the future, FocusEconomics surveys forecasters around the world. Their numbers lead to an average forecast for each significant country, which are then added up for a regional and world forecast. This “bottoms up” approach means that the world forecast FocusEconomics presents is based on how economists on the ground in different countries and regions see those particular countries responding to both internal and external pressures.

The global picture appears brighter than recent headlines suggest, confirming that news sources tend to highlight bad news and negative trends that “might” or “could” lead to problems.

Surprisingly (at least to me), the United States did not pull the world forecast down. Back in December, GDP growth in 2025 and 2026 was predicted to be 1.7% and 2.0% respectively. The June update shows projections of 1.5% and 1.6%. So the U.S. forecast revision was smaller than the world‘s. China’s projected growth rate also dropped less than the world in total. Europe‘s forecast drop was about equal, in percentage terms, to the world’s.

These forecast changes arise not just from President Trumps tariff policies but also everything else in the world. Wars, government policies, demographics and weather all impact the economy, so we cannot really pin all change on the tariff controversy. But the small magnitude of forecast changes illustrates that professional economists are not anticipating disaster, even though they may not be particularly happy with the direction of policy changes. A policy that I consider a mistake may not swing my economic forecast as much as one tenth of one percent. This is a good reason to avoid rhetoric about how bad or good certain new policies will be.

In most countries monetary policy is expected by those surveyed by FocusEconomics to ease over the next 18 months. Already in 2025 Canada, the Euro Area and the United Kingdom have cut interest rates. Although this policy assumption will tend to ameliorate GDP deceleration, monetary policy acts with a significant time lag. Further interest rate cuts around the world would have their effects in 2026 and 2027.

Long-term bond rate comparisons currently reflect local monetary policy. So long interest rates have increased in Japan, fallen in the Euro Area and remained roughly level in the U.S.

Helping the global economic outlook, oil prices have dropped to $62 per barrel in the United States, down from $80 a year prior. Oil runs a little more expensive in Europe, but the decline in the past 12 months has been comparable to the U.S. Back-of-the-envelope estimates show that the cheaper oil would boost GDP growth by about 0.1 percentage point. Other commodity prices are mostly unchanged.

Rolling all factors together, it makes sense for the economic outlook to have only deteriorated a little. Although the president has imposed some draconian tariffs, he has quickly retreated on many specific levies. Stock market speculators use the term “TACO trade,” where the acronym means “Trump Always Chickens Out.” If that statement bears truth, then tariffs wont be high for long.

Nonetheless, its hard to ignore tariff uncertainty as a global factor depressing business hiring and investment and possibly leading consumers to defer discretionary spending. Although the most-likely outcome is bad, the range of possibilities is unusually wide at this time.

Business leaders with a global span can take the consensus among economists as comforting. Individual countries will vary, of course. The key takeaway for executives is probably to pay less attention to the news, moderate attention to hard economic data, and lots of attention to their specific business operations.