Global growth is ‘probably not enough’ to withstand a trade war, IMF’s Christine Lagarde warns

The global economy, while still growing, has hit a plateau and may not be strong enough to withstand rising trade tensions, International Monetary Fund (IMF) Managing Director Christine Lagarde said Thursday. The IMF earlier this week cut its forecast for global growth to 3.7 percent this year and next year — down 0.2 percentage points from an earlier estimate. The downward revisions mean that the global economy would grow by the same rate for three consecutive years starting 2017. “The real question is: Is the economy strong enough? To that, my answer is ‘probably not enough’ because we clearly see growth has plateaued three years in a row — it is at 3.7 percent — and we also see that growth is unevenly allocated around the world,” Lagarde told reporters at the IMF and World Bank annual meetings in Bali, Indonesia. Read more here