Hello and welcome to the program. This is News Hour from the BBC World Service. We're coming to you live from London. I'm Paul Henley. We'll have extensive coverage shortly on the program of preparations for the Pope's funeral at the Vatican and reaction from around the world to his death.

First, the International Monetary Fund has just released its latest world economic outlook.

It's the first significant global gauge of the effect of President Trump's widespread trade tariffs,

and it is not by any measure good.

The IMF had to completely revise its forecast for annual growth as soon as the first tariffs were announced.

It's now significantly lowered its global growth predictions.

Michelle Flurry is the BBC's New York business correspondent and she joins us now live.

Welcome, Michelle. The IMF says the landscape has changed. What does it mean?

Look, at the start of this year, you were seeing, certainly here in the United States, where I am, a strong start.

Inflation, progress had been made. Unemployment was down to sort of levels that are considered healthy.

The economy was growing. Most economists were

looking for around 2.5% growth this year, 2 to 2.5%. Now, suddenly, within the last couple of months,

we've seen massive changes to the outlook, not just here in America, but also around the world.

And all of this, in large part in America, but also around the world. And all of

this, in large part, has to do with the ripple effect of Donald Trump's trade war and the impact

it's having on global economies. And so because of that, you've got the IMF now saying that they

expect global growth to be much weaker. They're saying 1.8% for the US.

And that reflects a cut of nearly a percentage point

compared to what they were expecting back in January.

So you're sort of starting to see really kind of the impact,

the damage that's being done by these tariffs.

Now, the IMF is essentially making educated

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