World Economy Review - July 2019
Nikkei Index
A sharp deceleration of global trade driven by ongoing trade tensions is slowing the global economy more than earlier projections, according to the latest forecasts of the International Monetary Fund.
Real global economic growth will slow to 3.2% this year, 0.1 percentage point slower than forecast in April, and down from 3.6% last year and 3.8% in 2017, according to the quarterly update to the IMF`s flagship World Economic Outlook.
The slowdown in growth and downgrade in the forecast reflect the ongoing fallout from trade tensions. Since the IMF`s last round of forecasts in April, three more months of data have confirmed weaker growth in much of the world, while tariffs escalated between the U.S. and China during a two-month breakdown in negotiations.
Global trade has decelerated rapidly during the ongoing trade tensions. The IMF now projects world trade will grow 2.5% in 2019, a downgrade of nearly a full percentage point in the forecast since April. Earlier forecasts had anticipated a slowdown, but not this sharp. As recently as 2017, global trade in goods and services was growing at a robust 5.5%.
“Global growth is sluggish and precarious, but it does not have to be this way because some of this is self-inflicted,” said Gita Gopinath, the IMF`s chief economist.
“Dynamism in the global economy is being weighed down by prolonged policy uncertainty as trade tensions remain heightened despite the recent U.S.-China trade truce,” she said, referring to an agreement in late June between President Trump and China`s President Xi Jinping to...
The World Economy
World GDP Growth, %
The world economy can be evaluated in various ways, depending on the model used, and this valuation can then be represented in various ways (for example, in 2006 US dollars). It is inseparable from the geography and ecology of Earth, and is therefore somewhat of a misnomer, since, while definitions and representations of the "world economy" vary widely, they must at a minimum exclude any consideration of resources or value based outside of the Earth.
For example, while attempts could be made to calculate the value of currently unexploited mining opportunities in unclaimed territory in Antarctica, the same opportunities on Mars would not be considered a part of the world economy - even if currently exploited in some way - and could be considered of latent value only in the same way as uncreated intellectual property, such as a previously unconceived invention. Beyond the minimum standard of concerning value in production, use, and exchange on the planet Earth, definitions, representations, models, and valuations of the world economy vary widely.
It is common to limit questions of the world economy exclusively to Human economic activity, and the world economy is typically judged in monetary terms, even in cases in which there is no efficient market to help valuate certain goods or services, or in cases in which a lack of independent research or government cooperation makes establishing figures difficult. Typical examples are illegal drugs and prostitution, which by any standard are a part of the world economy, but for which there is by definition no legal market of any kind.