April 23, 2025 • 15 mins
The International Monetary Fund released a forecast this week projecting that global GDP will grow just 2.8% — down half a percentage point since US President Donald Trump unleashed a raft of tariffs on April 2. Their projection for US GDP growth was particularly grim: Down nearly an entire percentage point from expectations earlier this year.
And they’re not alone. As economists try to measure the potential outcome from the current trade war and the whiplash of on-again-off-again tariffs, Bloomberg Economics landed on similar GDP projections
On today’s episode of the Big Take, host Sarah Holder is joined by Bloomberg’s Enda Curran and Bloomberg Economics Chief Economist Tom Orlik to discuss what these projections can — and can’t — tell us about where the trade war could lead.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
This week, the International Monetary Fund is holding its Spring
Meeting in Washington, DC.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
Around this time of the year, every year, central bank
governors and finance ministers from around the world all arrive
in DC to meet with the World Bank and the IMF.
It's kind of all part of the US leadership of
the global economy.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
Bloomberg Global Economy Reporter and The Current has covered the
meeting before.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
Normally, the conversations are on growth and inflation and very
boring stuff that people aren't interested in.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
This time, I hasn't been boring because right now world
economies are in a moment of unprecedented uncertainty. Trump's teriff
announcements have caused ongoing volatility in markets, They're impacting consumer sentiment,
and they're threatening the US's reputation as a financial safe haven.
Earlier this week, the IMF released a forecast predicting a
(00:58):
global economic slowed.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
It was a big warning from the IMF this week,
premised on the impact of tariffs and trade uncertainty, that
those policies that the US are pursuing are going to
hurt economic growth, not just in the US but around
the world.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
This morning, all eyes were on US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessant,
who reaffirmed US support for the IMF while calling on
the institution to help rebalance international trade.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
My goal this morning is to outline a blueprint to
restore equilibrium to the global financial system and the institutions
designed to uphold it.
Speaker 2 (01:39):
I'm Sarah Holder, and this is the big take from
Bloomberg News today. On the show, how the world's top
economists are assessing the impact of the US's trade war
and what it means for global economic output and the
GDPs of countries around the world. At its core, the
(02:00):
IMF performs two functions. It identifies potential financial and economic
risks across the globe, and it's a crisis lender, so
when a government runs out of money, the IMF can
step in as a lender and to advise on next steps.
Speaker 1 (02:15):
It's one of the world's, if not the world's, most
premier economic institution.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
A big feature of the IMF Spring meeting is its
Global Economic Outlook. It's gut check of the world's economic health.
Only this year that forecast had to be overhauled in
a matter of weeks. I want to get metap for
a moment and just talk about the forecast itself and
how it was made. The IMF is calling this a
reference forecast because it's economist had to scrap projections. Just
(02:41):
how unusual is that.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
It's very unusual to the IMF forecasting around what obviously
takes several months typically speaking, are not just forecasting one economy.
They're trying to pull together aggregate numbers from all around
the world and pull together a clear picture and where
things are headed, which is useful for investors and analysts alike.
So they had that process underway that was more or
(03:03):
less in place until April second, when the new tariffs
were an ence and the IMF himselves said they had
to tear up that whole set of forecasts start again
and this time introduce kind of scenarios into forecast. Instead
of coming out with one number, this is what we
see and this is what we think is going to happen.
They had to factor in a range of here's what
we know so far, here's what might happen, but this
(03:24):
may also happen. We don't know what's going to happen.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
This year's reference forecast was especially grim. The IMF projects
that global GDP will grow just two point eight percent.
That's down from previous projections made before Trump's Liberation Day tariffs.
The US GDP was also revised down by nearly a
full percentage point. Just to make sense of that two
(03:49):
point eight percent number a little bit more, The IMF
isn't projecting that growth is going to stop, but just
that it's going to slow down. What does that actually
look like in practice? How might that show up for
the average person and who sees this headline and is
unsure what to make of it.
Speaker 1 (04:04):
It's probably going to be felt most acutely in those
economies that manufacture a lot of goods for export, and
especially for export to say the US. So there are
economies there in Southeast Asia, for example, Vietnam, you would
say it would be vulnerable to a big slowdown in trade.
China's manufacturing sector would obviously be vulnerable to a big
(04:25):
slow down in trade with the US. We're already hearing
through our own reporting and our colleagues around the world
that shipments are being canceled and factories are putting production
on hold. Is that will obviously impact employment in those
manufacturing heavy economies. Mexico is another one that would be
vulnerable to an impact from tariffs. So yes, you do
(04:45):
have a global headline figure. Not everyone will necessarily feel
this in the same way. Depends what sector of the
economy you work in, services or manufacturing, aroun anything else.
There are some positives. Germany is going to spend the
money that's going to lift the European economy. China too,
is put money into its economy, but the really impact
I think will come to those who depend on manufacturing
(05:05):
and on trade and on that side of things.
Speaker 2 (05:07):
Like the US, China had a sizeable downgrade in the
latest IMF projections.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
China growing at four percent is well below the official
target where the government wants to grow, for example, So
that tells you the pressure China will be under to
put money into the economy and support things and make
sure that those people are finding working and factories have
working that they keep things ticking over there. The US
also had that down grade of almost one percentage point.
That's a huge down grade for the world's biggest economy,
(05:34):
and the US has been the locomotive for global growth
over the past few years. US consumption has been so
important for those exporting nations around the world, And of
course that's part of the BIGG argument now over imbalances.
So when you have the US being downgraded the way
it has, you have China been down graded the way
it has. They're the world's number one and two economies.
(05:55):
That will obviously have spill over for the rest of
the global economy, and that's why they're warning of a
slower year for activity everywhere.
Speaker 2 (06:02):
Our colleagues at Bloomberg Economics ran their own forecast and
landed in a similar place.
Speaker 3 (06:07):
President Trump has introduced an absolutely enormous tariff shock into
the global economy.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
Tom Orlick is chief economist for Bloomberg Economics.
Speaker 3 (06:17):
US tariffs, the average tariff which US charges on imports
has gone from two percent before Trump took office all
the way up to above twenty percent. And if you
want to understand the of the magnitude of that shock,
well that takes US tariffs up to a level not
seen in the last one hundred years. And modeling that
(06:40):
shock is really pretty difficult. It is difficult because we
don't know where the Trump tariffs are going to settle, right.
Tariffs came out really high on Liberation Day, April the second,
and then they were pretty quickly revised down, but there's
a threat that they could be revised up again if
other countries don't give the US what it wants. And
(07:01):
it's difficult because, well, in general, the way economic forecasts
work is you look at a similar episode in history,
you see what happened then, and you apply that as
a kind of template to thinking about the outlook.
Speaker 2 (07:15):
But this time round, it's a lot harder when there
is no precedent.
Speaker 3 (07:19):
Exactly, Sarah, Welcome to the economics profession. There just hasn't
been a shock like this since World War Two, so
it's hard to find that template. So all of that
is to say, there are some pretty serious caveats, a
pretty wide band of uncertainty around our forecast. And I'm
sure if you had the IMF here on the Big
Take podcast, they'd say the same thing that said, we
(07:41):
took the Trump tariffs and we plugged them into our
model of the global economy, and what we're anticipating is
that global growth in twenty twenty five is going to
come in at around two point seven percent. That's much
lower than the three point one percent forecast that we
had before the Trump tariffs were introduced. We think the
(08:01):
tariffs are going to stay in place. Trump wants to
rebalance trade, he wants to raise revenue. You can't do
that if tariffs are only in place for a short time.
So our forecast for twenty twenty six twenty twenty seven,
they've come down a lot as well. When you add
it up, we're looking at a cost to global GDP
over the next three years of around two trillion dollars
(08:24):
if those Trump tariffs stay in place.
Speaker 2 (08:26):
Tom, just how significant is a two trillion dollar loss
to the world's GDP? How big is two trillion?
Speaker 3 (08:32):
So if we look at some of the biggest economies
in the world, well, Brazil, Canada, Italy, Russia, they all
have annual GDP of around two trillion dollars. So a
two trillion loss is roughly equivalent to saying goodbye to
the entire annual output of one of those big economies.
(08:54):
If we think about the historical context, is this as
big as the COVID shock? Is this is big as
the global financial crisis shock? No, it's not quite of
that level of magnitude, but we're still talking about a
really serious hit.
Speaker 2 (09:11):
After the break, we look at the impact these kinds
of forecasts could have on global policy and whether any
trade deals could happen. On the sidelines of the IMF
meetings this week, both the International Monetary Funds forecasts and
(09:35):
Bloomberg Economics projections highlight how difficult it will be for
the global economy to absorb Trump's tariffs and the political
uncertainty that comes with them.
Speaker 3 (09:46):
The global economy has just been hit by an absolutely
enormous shock.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
Right.
Speaker 3 (09:51):
A big part of that shock comes from the tariffs themselves.
An additional part of it comes from this sense of
a parentaradigm shift. Right. For the last forty years, the
US has been the guarranteur and the champion of the
global free trade system. But now President Trump has come
in and said, actually that's not correct, right, It's not correct.
(10:15):
Trade creates some very significant costs. Huge costs for factory
workers in the United States who lost out as jobs
were shipped overseas to China, to Mexico, national security risks
as we have a massive trade deficit with China, our
main geopolitical competitor. Doesn't make sense to rely on China
(10:38):
for so many crucial goods. So President Trump has come
in and introduced this paradigm shift, and that, along with
the tariff shock itself, is an important reason why everybody
is scrambling to rethink their forecasts.
Speaker 2 (10:54):
I'm curious, in a time of such global uncertainty, how
much weight policymakers and global leaders and economists such as
yourselves put on these forecasts.
Speaker 3 (11:03):
I think, being really honest, any forecasts made now are
inevitably going to be wrong.
Speaker 1 (11:09):
Right.
Speaker 3 (11:10):
They're going to be wrong because we don't know what's
going to happen to tariffs. They could go up, they
could go down, And they're going to be wrong because
other stuff is going to happen, right, stuff that we
couldn't foresee. So what we hope with our forecast is
partly that we're providing people with applausible base case, but
more important that we're providing people with a way of
(11:33):
thinking about the dynamics at work now. Are these forecasts
changing the view in the White House? I doubt it.
I think what potentially is changing the view in the
White House is what's happening in the financial markets, and
what we've seen since that April the Second Liberation Day
is just enormous volatility in global markets and bad news
(11:56):
for the United States. Right, Global stocks are down, US
docs are down more, the dollar has significantly weakened. There
was a moment last week where it felt like the
treasury market could be on the brink of dysfunction.
Speaker 1 (12:10):
Right.
Speaker 3 (12:11):
President Trump, his advisors, they're looking at these market moves.
I think that is an important part of the reason
we've seen a pullback from some of those very very
elevated tariffs that were introduced on April.
Speaker 2 (12:24):
Second, how might further escalations or de escalations in the
trade war impact that top line number.
Speaker 3 (12:30):
So, I think there's a few things to think about here, Sarah.
So the first one is I think risks to tariffs
are now in both directions.
Speaker 1 (12:38):
Right.
Speaker 3 (12:39):
Trump has said he's giving a ninety day reprieve to
countries to give them a chance to come to the
US with concessions. We've heard Treasury Secretary Scott Bessen's over
the last few days talking about how the current tariff
rate on China isn't sustainable and President Trump saying he'd
be open to significantly reducing it. If tariffs go up,
(13:00):
well that's going to be a bigger blow to US
growth and to global growth. If tariffs come down, well
that's going to be a smaller blow. Why do we
think that some substantial tariffs are going to stay in
place even if they're not at exactly the current level. Well,
a couple of reasons. The first is that Trump is
serious about the idea that global trade needs to be rebalanced, right,
(13:25):
and you can't rebalance global trade with temporary tariffs. The
second reason is that Trump has identified US debts as
a big problem, and he wants to cut taxes to
boost US economic dynamism, and he needs to find some
revenue to offset those tax cuts and to keep US
debt on a sustainable trajectory. Now, how he wants to
(13:47):
do that is by raising tariff revenue. And once again,
you can't raise tariff revenue with temporary tariffs, right if
you want to be raising tariff revenue, not just right now,
but into twenty twenty six, twenty twenty seven, twenty twenty eight,
while these tariffs need to stay in place.
Speaker 2 (14:02):
After I spoke with end the Current this afternoon, he
had to go back to covering the IMF meetings, But
before he left, I asked him what we could expect
from the rest of this week. Are there any trade
deals being negotiated?
Speaker 3 (14:14):
Right?
Speaker 2 (14:14):
Now at the IMF meeting.
Speaker 1 (14:16):
Yes, the Treasury delegation, we'll be meeting with lots of
countries who are here, and the Treasure sector has said
they will be meeting delegations. Some of the officials here,
for example, Indian delegation earlier today spoke about that they're
here to talk business with the US, and we know
Japan has advanced in that process too. Now. I don't
(14:36):
expect there will be deals announced per se, but yes,
there are meetings happening with Treasury, with the Trade represent Office,
with Commerce are all sitting down. They're huddling their swopping notes.
I doubt we'll get major deals like announced and signed here,
but it's part of the process.
Speaker 2 (14:57):
This is the big take from Bloomberg News. I'm Sarah.
This episode was produced by Julia Press with support from
Rachel Lewis Krisky. It was edited by Chris Anstey and
by our senior producer Naomi Shaven and Deputy Executive producer
Julia Weaver. It was fact checked by our editorial team
and mixed and sound designed by Alex Sugia. Our senior
editor is Elizabeth Ponso. Our executive producer is Nicole Beamster.
(15:20):
Bor Sage Bauman is Bloomberg's head of podcasts. If you
liked this episode, make sure to subscribe and review The
Big Take wherever you listen to podcasts. It helps people
find the show. Thanks for listening, We'll be back tomorrow
Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
This week, the International Monetary Fund is holding its Spring
Meeting in Washington, DC.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
Around this time of the year, every year, central bank
governors and finance ministers from around the world all arrive
in DC to meet with the World Bank and the IMF.
It's kind of all part of the US leadership of
the global economy.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
Bloomberg Global Economy Reporter and The Current has covered the
meeting before.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
Normally, the conversations are on growth and inflation and very
boring stuff that people aren't interested in.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
This time, I hasn't been boring because right now world
economies are in a moment of unprecedented uncertainty. Trump's teriff
announcements have caused ongoing volatility in markets, They're impacting consumer sentiment,
and they're threatening the US's reputation as a financial safe haven.
Earlier this week, the IMF released a forecast predicting a
(00:58):
global economic slowed.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
It was a big warning from the IMF this week,
premised on the impact of tariffs and trade uncertainty, that
those policies that the US are pursuing are going to
hurt economic growth, not just in the US but around
the world.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
This morning, all eyes were on US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessant,
who reaffirmed US support for the IMF while calling on
the institution to help rebalance international trade.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
My goal this morning is to outline a blueprint to
restore equilibrium to the global financial system and the institutions
designed to uphold it.
Speaker 2 (01:39):
I'm Sarah Holder, and this is the big take from
Bloomberg News today. On the show, how the world's top
economists are assessing the impact of the US's trade war
and what it means for global economic output and the
GDPs of countries around the world. At its core, the
(02:00):
IMF performs two functions. It identifies potential financial and economic
risks across the globe, and it's a crisis lender, so
when a government runs out of money, the IMF can
step in as a lender and to advise on next steps.
Speaker 1 (02:15):
It's one of the world's, if not the world's, most
premier economic institution.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
A big feature of the IMF Spring meeting is its
Global Economic Outlook. It's gut check of the world's economic health.
Only this year that forecast had to be overhauled in
a matter of weeks. I want to get metap for
a moment and just talk about the forecast itself and
how it was made. The IMF is calling this a
reference forecast because it's economist had to scrap projections. Just
(02:41):
how unusual is that.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
It's very unusual to the IMF forecasting around what obviously
takes several months typically speaking, are not just forecasting one economy.
They're trying to pull together aggregate numbers from all around
the world and pull together a clear picture and where
things are headed, which is useful for investors and analysts alike.
So they had that process underway that was more or
(03:03):
less in place until April second, when the new tariffs
were an ence and the IMF himselves said they had
to tear up that whole set of forecasts start again
and this time introduce kind of scenarios into forecast. Instead
of coming out with one number, this is what we
see and this is what we think is going to happen.
They had to factor in a range of here's what
we know so far, here's what might happen, but this
(03:24):
may also happen. We don't know what's going to happen.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
This year's reference forecast was especially grim. The IMF projects
that global GDP will grow just two point eight percent.
That's down from previous projections made before Trump's Liberation Day tariffs.
The US GDP was also revised down by nearly a
full percentage point. Just to make sense of that two
(03:49):
point eight percent number a little bit more, The IMF
isn't projecting that growth is going to stop, but just
that it's going to slow down. What does that actually
look like in practice? How might that show up for
the average person and who sees this headline and is
unsure what to make of it.
Speaker 1 (04:04):
It's probably going to be felt most acutely in those
economies that manufacture a lot of goods for export, and
especially for export to say the US. So there are
economies there in Southeast Asia, for example, Vietnam, you would
say it would be vulnerable to a big slowdown in trade.
China's manufacturing sector would obviously be vulnerable to a big
(04:25):
slow down in trade with the US. We're already hearing
through our own reporting and our colleagues around the world
that shipments are being canceled and factories are putting production
on hold. Is that will obviously impact employment in those
manufacturing heavy economies. Mexico is another one that would be
vulnerable to an impact from tariffs. So yes, you do
(04:45):
have a global headline figure. Not everyone will necessarily feel
this in the same way. Depends what sector of the
economy you work in, services or manufacturing, aroun anything else.
There are some positives. Germany is going to spend the
money that's going to lift the European economy. China too,
is put money into its economy, but the really impact
I think will come to those who depend on manufacturing
(05:05):
and on trade and on that side of things.
Speaker 2 (05:07):
Like the US, China had a sizeable downgrade in the
latest IMF projections.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
China growing at four percent is well below the official
target where the government wants to grow, for example, So
that tells you the pressure China will be under to
put money into the economy and support things and make
sure that those people are finding working and factories have
working that they keep things ticking over there. The US
also had that down grade of almost one percentage point.
That's a huge down grade for the world's biggest economy,
(05:34):
and the US has been the locomotive for global growth
over the past few years. US consumption has been so
important for those exporting nations around the world, And of
course that's part of the BIGG argument now over imbalances.
So when you have the US being downgraded the way
it has, you have China been down graded the way
it has. They're the world's number one and two economies.
(05:55):
That will obviously have spill over for the rest of
the global economy, and that's why they're warning of a
slower year for activity everywhere.
Speaker 2 (06:02):
Our colleagues at Bloomberg Economics ran their own forecast and
landed in a similar place.
Speaker 3 (06:07):
President Trump has introduced an absolutely enormous tariff shock into
the global economy.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
Tom Orlick is chief economist for Bloomberg Economics.
Speaker 3 (06:17):
US tariffs, the average tariff which US charges on imports
has gone from two percent before Trump took office all
the way up to above twenty percent. And if you
want to understand the of the magnitude of that shock,
well that takes US tariffs up to a level not
seen in the last one hundred years. And modeling that
(06:40):
shock is really pretty difficult. It is difficult because we
don't know where the Trump tariffs are going to settle, right.
Tariffs came out really high on Liberation Day, April the second,
and then they were pretty quickly revised down, but there's
a threat that they could be revised up again if
other countries don't give the US what it wants. And
(07:01):
it's difficult because, well, in general, the way economic forecasts
work is you look at a similar episode in history,
you see what happened then, and you apply that as
a kind of template to thinking about the outlook.
Speaker 2 (07:15):
But this time round, it's a lot harder when there
is no precedent.
Speaker 3 (07:19):
Exactly, Sarah, Welcome to the economics profession. There just hasn't
been a shock like this since World War Two, so
it's hard to find that template. So all of that
is to say, there are some pretty serious caveats, a
pretty wide band of uncertainty around our forecast. And I'm
sure if you had the IMF here on the Big
Take podcast, they'd say the same thing that said, we
(07:41):
took the Trump tariffs and we plugged them into our
model of the global economy, and what we're anticipating is
that global growth in twenty twenty five is going to
come in at around two point seven percent. That's much
lower than the three point one percent forecast that we
had before the Trump tariffs were introduced. We think the
(08:01):
tariffs are going to stay in place. Trump wants to
rebalance trade, he wants to raise revenue. You can't do
that if tariffs are only in place for a short time.
So our forecast for twenty twenty six twenty twenty seven,
they've come down a lot as well. When you add
it up, we're looking at a cost to global GDP
over the next three years of around two trillion dollars
(08:24):
if those Trump tariffs stay in place.
Speaker 2 (08:26):
Tom, just how significant is a two trillion dollar loss
to the world's GDP? How big is two trillion?
Speaker 3 (08:32):
So if we look at some of the biggest economies
in the world, well, Brazil, Canada, Italy, Russia, they all
have annual GDP of around two trillion dollars. So a
two trillion loss is roughly equivalent to saying goodbye to
the entire annual output of one of those big economies.
(08:54):
If we think about the historical context, is this as
big as the COVID shock? Is this is big as
the global financial crisis shock? No, it's not quite of
that level of magnitude, but we're still talking about a
really serious hit.
Speaker 2 (09:11):
After the break, we look at the impact these kinds
of forecasts could have on global policy and whether any
trade deals could happen. On the sidelines of the IMF
meetings this week, both the International Monetary Funds forecasts and
(09:35):
Bloomberg Economics projections highlight how difficult it will be for
the global economy to absorb Trump's tariffs and the political
uncertainty that comes with them.
Speaker 3 (09:46):
The global economy has just been hit by an absolutely
enormous shock.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
Right.
Speaker 3 (09:51):
A big part of that shock comes from the tariffs themselves.
An additional part of it comes from this sense of
a parentaradigm shift. Right. For the last forty years, the
US has been the guarranteur and the champion of the
global free trade system. But now President Trump has come
in and said, actually that's not correct, right, It's not correct.
(10:15):
Trade creates some very significant costs. Huge costs for factory
workers in the United States who lost out as jobs
were shipped overseas to China, to Mexico, national security risks
as we have a massive trade deficit with China, our
main geopolitical competitor. Doesn't make sense to rely on China
(10:38):
for so many crucial goods. So President Trump has come
in and introduced this paradigm shift, and that, along with
the tariff shock itself, is an important reason why everybody
is scrambling to rethink their forecasts.
Speaker 2 (10:54):
I'm curious, in a time of such global uncertainty, how
much weight policymakers and global leaders and economists such as
yourselves put on these forecasts.
Speaker 3 (11:03):
I think, being really honest, any forecasts made now are
inevitably going to be wrong.
Speaker 1 (11:09):
Right.
Speaker 3 (11:10):
They're going to be wrong because we don't know what's
going to happen to tariffs. They could go up, they
could go down, And they're going to be wrong because
other stuff is going to happen, right, stuff that we
couldn't foresee. So what we hope with our forecast is
partly that we're providing people with applausible base case, but
more important that we're providing people with a way of
(11:33):
thinking about the dynamics at work now. Are these forecasts
changing the view in the White House? I doubt it.
I think what potentially is changing the view in the
White House is what's happening in the financial markets, and
what we've seen since that April the Second Liberation Day
is just enormous volatility in global markets and bad news
(11:56):
for the United States. Right, Global stocks are down, US
docs are down more, the dollar has significantly weakened. There
was a moment last week where it felt like the
treasury market could be on the brink of dysfunction.
Speaker 1 (12:10):
Right.
Speaker 3 (12:11):
President Trump, his advisors, they're looking at these market moves.
I think that is an important part of the reason
we've seen a pullback from some of those very very
elevated tariffs that were introduced on April.
Speaker 2 (12:24):
Second, how might further escalations or de escalations in the
trade war impact that top line number.
Speaker 3 (12:30):
So, I think there's a few things to think about here, Sarah.
So the first one is I think risks to tariffs
are now in both directions.
Speaker 1 (12:38):
Right.
Speaker 3 (12:39):
Trump has said he's giving a ninety day reprieve to
countries to give them a chance to come to the
US with concessions. We've heard Treasury Secretary Scott Bessen's over
the last few days talking about how the current tariff
rate on China isn't sustainable and President Trump saying he'd
be open to significantly reducing it. If tariffs go up,
(13:00):
well that's going to be a bigger blow to US
growth and to global growth. If tariffs come down, well
that's going to be a smaller blow. Why do we
think that some substantial tariffs are going to stay in
place even if they're not at exactly the current level. Well,
a couple of reasons. The first is that Trump is
serious about the idea that global trade needs to be rebalanced, right,
(13:25):
and you can't rebalance global trade with temporary tariffs. The
second reason is that Trump has identified US debts as
a big problem, and he wants to cut taxes to
boost US economic dynamism, and he needs to find some
revenue to offset those tax cuts and to keep US
debt on a sustainable trajectory. Now, how he wants to
(13:47):
do that is by raising tariff revenue. And once again,
you can't raise tariff revenue with temporary tariffs, right if
you want to be raising tariff revenue, not just right now,
but into twenty twenty six, twenty twenty seven, twenty twenty eight,
while these tariffs need to stay in place.
Speaker 2 (14:02):
After I spoke with end the Current this afternoon, he
had to go back to covering the IMF meetings, But
before he left, I asked him what we could expect
from the rest of this week. Are there any trade
deals being negotiated?
Speaker 3 (14:14):
Right?
Speaker 2 (14:14):
Now at the IMF meeting.
Speaker 1 (14:16):
Yes, the Treasury delegation, we'll be meeting with lots of
countries who are here, and the Treasure sector has said
they will be meeting delegations. Some of the officials here,
for example, Indian delegation earlier today spoke about that they're
here to talk business with the US, and we know
Japan has advanced in that process too. Now. I don't
(14:36):
expect there will be deals announced per se, but yes,
there are meetings happening with Treasury, with the Trade represent Office,
with Commerce are all sitting down. They're huddling their swopping notes.
I doubt we'll get major deals like announced and signed here,
but it's part of the process.
Speaker 2 (14:57):
This is the big take from Bloomberg News. I'm Sarah.
This episode was produced by Julia Press with support from
Rachel Lewis Krisky. It was edited by Chris Anstey and
by our senior producer Naomi Shaven and Deputy Executive producer
Julia Weaver. It was fact checked by our editorial team
and mixed and sound designed by Alex Sugia. Our senior
editor is Elizabeth Ponso. Our executive producer is Nicole Beamster.
(15:20):
Bor Sage Bauman is Bloomberg's head of podcasts. If you
liked this episode, make sure to subscribe and review The
Big Take wherever you listen to podcasts. It helps people
find the show. Thanks for listening, We'll be back tomorrow
Hosts And Creators
Sarah Holder
Saleha Mohsin
Popular Podcasts
The Breakfast Club
The World's Most Dangerous Morning Show, The Breakfast Club, With DJ Envy And Charlamagne Tha God!
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Decisions, Decisions
Welcome to "Decisions, Decisions," the podcast where boundaries are pushed, and conversations get candid! Join your favorite hosts, Mandii B and WeezyWTF, as they dive deep into the world of non-traditional relationships and explore the often-taboo topics surrounding dating, sex, and love. Every Monday, Mandii and Weezy invite you to unlearn the outdated narratives dictated by traditional patriarchal norms. With a blend of humor, vulnerability, and authenticity, they share their personal journeys navigating their 30s, tackling the complexities of modern relationships, and engaging in thought-provoking discussions that challenge societal expectations. From groundbreaking interviews with diverse guests to relatable stories that resonate with your experiences, "Decisions, Decisions" is your go-to source for open dialogue about what it truly means to love and connect in today's world. Get ready to reshape your understanding of relationships and embrace the freedom of authentic connections—tune in and join the conversation!