Hello and welcome to NewsHour live from the BBC World Service in London.

I'm Rebecca Kesb.

And we begin with the news that the International Monetary Fund has slashed its forecast for global growth.

The IMF is an international organisation funded by 191 member states.

It was formed in the wake of World War II.

And today, its chief economist, Pierre Olivia Gorinchas, said the IMF now predicts the global economy will grow by only 2.8% this year.

That's a fall of 0.5% on previous forecasts. And he said the US tariff policy

and the uncertainty surrounding it was partly to blame.

The landscape has changed since our last world economic outlook update in January. We're

entering a new era as the global economic system that has operated for the last

80 years is being reset. Since late January, many tariff announcements have been made,

culminating on April 2nd with near universal levies from the United States and counter-responses

from some trading partners.

Beyond the abrupt increase in tariffs, the surge in policy and certainty is a major driver

of the economic outlook. If sustained, the increase in trade tensions and uncertainty will

slow global growth significantly. Mr. Gorinchas said that the U.S. economy itself could be the worst affected.

For the United States, the tariffs represent a supply shock

that reduces productivity and output permanently and increases price pressures temporarily. This adds to an already weakening outlook

and leads us to revise growth down by 0.9 percentage point to 1.8% with a 0.4 percentage point

downgrade from the tariffs only, while inflation is revised upwards.

And he went on to say that the chances that the US economy would go into recession

had been significantly increased.

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