Catenaa, Tuesday, June 10, 2025- The world economy will grow at its slowest pace since the 1960s during this decade, the World Bank warned on Tuesday, as trade wars will hit economies.
Citing “a substantial rise in trade barriers’’ the World Bank said that the US economy would grow half as fast (1.4%) this year as it did in 2024 (2.8%). That marked a downgrade from the 2.3% U.S. growth it had forecast for 2025 back in January.
The bank also lopped 0.4 percentage points off its forecast for global growth this year. It now expects the world economy to expand just 2.3% in 2025, down from 2.8% in 2024.
The World Bank said that by 2027, global growth will have averaged just 2.5% in the 2020s.
This would be the worst of any decade since the 1960s, when the United States and the USSR were in the grip of the Cold War and the Space Race.
Chief economist Indermit Gill said: “The world economy today is once more running into turbulence. Without a swift course correction, the harm to living standards could be deep.
“International discord, about trade, in particular, has upended many of the policy certainties that helped shrink extreme poverty and expand prosperity after the end of World War II.”
Meanwhile, the Chinese economy is forecasted to see growth slow from 5% in 2024 to 4.5% this year and 4% next.
It comes as officials from the US and China meet in London today for a second day of talks aimed at easing trade tensions.
US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said the talks with his Chinese counterparts were “going well” and were expected to last the whole day.
