News & Insights

In 2024, global growth has remained stable and world trade has been recovering, while price pressures continued to ebb. Investors project that this resilience will continue in 2025, with inflation further converging towards central banks’ targets. However, this outlook masks significant differences across sectors and countries, and is surrounded by important uncertainties.

While global growth has proved resilient to policy tightening, significant divergences have emerged across countries, and the outcome of the US election has increased the risks for that trend to amplify. Furthermore, by choosing not to act on any assumptions about what the incoming US administration might enact, combined with the long and variable lags of monetary policy, the Fed will struggle to contain the economic consequences of Donald Trump’s priorities.

The outcome of the US election has increased the risks for the global economy, as trade wars and higher interest rates have the potential to derail the resilience of growth. Furthermore, regional divergences could widen as Europe and China will likely be facing a challenging environment, although policymakers have tools to mitigate the impact of Trump’s agenda

The global economy grapples with a faltering goods sector and higher geopolitical risks. Nonetheless, investors remain confident that an accelerated policy easing would interact with supportive financial conditions to safeguard the resilience of the global economy, especially since China recently announced a coordinated set of monetary and fiscal measures.

Global growth is decelerating, but investors expect it will pick up as the impact of monetary policy easing gains traction early next year. Yet, soft landings are hard to track as the early signs of a deceleration look painfully similar to a slide into recession.

Weakening business confidence indices continue to cast doubts on the global economy’s resilience. Although core inflation remains above central banks’ targets, the cooling of labour markets has not gone unnoticed, prompting a major shift in policy rates projections.

Business confidence fell at the end of Q2-24, casting doubts on the positive momentum going into the second half of the year, while rising political uncertainty add to an already complicated conduct of monetary policy.

Although the global economy is still experiencing the lagged effects of tighter monetary policy, business confidence has been improving over the past few months, suggesting positive momentum going into the second half of the year. Will central banks be a tailwind or a headwind?

Recent monthly indicators suggest that the slowdown in global growth around the turn of the year has bottomed out. However, inflation outlook remains murky and the latest data have shaken investors’ confidence that significant monetary policy easing is in the offing.

Recent data suggest that inflation could prove persistently high for some time and limit the room for central bank easing. Despite this high-for-long path for policy stances, investors remain convinced it will not prove sufficient to derail global growth.

Global growth resilience expected in 2024 masks the continuation of sharp regional divergences. Although headline inflation in most G20 countries is projected to continue its normalisation, it is unlikely to be back to target before the end of 2025, and upside risks remain elevated. In fact, central banks may be forced to remain prudent to ensure that underlying inflationary pressures are durably contained.

Regional divergence remained significant at the end of 2023. Although the impacts of high interest rates and the withdrawal of fiscal support are expected to weigh on growth in 2024, investors are keeping their sanguine outlook as they foresee fast interest rate cuts. Yet, resilient labour markets and renewed pressures on supply chains could require a tighter monetary policy stance than expected, upsetting investors’ high hopes.