The tariff war unleashed by US President Donald Trump is putting a brake on the global economy, a brake even more pronounced on the two main contenders in the trade dispute: the United States and China, which has become the priority target of his tariff attack. The latest report from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) It's a new warning of the insecurity and instability being generated by Trump's economic aggression, a policy that there are signs could come back to haunt him like a boomerang.
For the economic world, predictability is a key element when it comes to managing the present and projecting the future, both in the areas of business investments and private consumption. When entrepreneurs and families feel insecure, when they see signs of instability, transactions of all kinds slow down. This is the scenario in which we are settling into a global economic reality that has been clearly globalized and interconnected for decades. As we are seeing, a decision in Washington—in this case a cascade of decisions—has immediate repercussions in Beijing and everywhere else. We have experienced this very graphically in recent weeks with the stock markets. In essence, this is what the IMF is warning about, according to which, if there is no change of course and, therefore, uncertainty persists, the outlook for this year and the next will be one of slowdown.
Europe appears to be partly dodging the shock. And in Spain's case, thanks to its tailwind, it isn't affected. In fact, according to the report,World economic outlookAccording to the IMF's quarterly forecast, the Spanish economy has improved by 0.2 percentage points compared to the January forecast, reaching 2.5%. Thus, Spain remains the most dynamic country in the European Union for another quarter. But no one can deny that its dynamism is too heavily based on the tourism sector and low-skilled, low-wage jobs. Restructuring toward a higher value-added economy remains a requirement if Catalonia and the Spanish state as a whole truly want to ensure solid growth in the coming years. An economy, for example, with more skilled jobs and, therefore, higher salaries. In fact, across Europe as a whole, the IMF's optimism is based on two factors: "real wage growth" that is fostering greater household consumption, and the sharper increase in public spending in Germany, the continent's largest economy, where the Constitution was recently amended to eliminate limits on public deficits. According to the IMF, the eurozone will grow by 0.8% this year and 1.2% in 2026.
In the case of the US, the figures are better, but the projection is for stagnation: 1.8% for 2025 (one percentage point below the growth rate2 of the previous forecast for 2025) and 1.7% for 2026. As for China, it would fall from 4.6% in the January report to 4%, and by 2026, it would also remain at 4%. Trump's trade war is, ultimately, bad business for everyone.
