Middle East war will slow global economic growth, IMF warns

WASHINGTON — War in the Middle East has upended the world economy, the International Monetary Fund said Tuesday, warning in a report that disruptions to oil markets could slow growth, fuel inflation and raise the possibility of a global recession.

The sober message came after the global economy had largely weathered a pandemic, Russia’s war in Ukraine and soaring inflation without tipping into a recession. But President Donald Trump’s decision to initiate a war in Iran has stopped the world economy in its tracks.

In its latest World Economic Outlook, the IMF sharply downgraded its growth forecasts, exposing the economic fallout from a geopolitical crisis that has roiled energy prices and injected a new bout of uncertainty into the global economy.

“The global outlook has abruptly darkened following the outbreak of war in the Middle East,” Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas, the IMF’s chief economist, wrote in the report. “The war interrupted what had been a steady growth trajectory.”

The IMF said that even if the war is short-lived, the damage to the global economy has been done. In that best-case scenario, the fund expects global growth to fall to 3.1% this year from 3.4% in 2025. That is down from the 3.3% the fund projected in January. It is also lower than the 3.4% growth that it was prepared to project before the war broke out and oil shipments through the Strait of Hormuz were halted.

The forecasts were released as global policymakers arrived in Washington for the spring meetings of the IMF and the World Bank. Just a few weeks ago, the gathering was expected to focus on other disruptions, including trade tensions, artificial intelligence and international fiscal imbalances. It will instead be dominated by the economic fallout of the war.

As the meetings started Tuesday, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent urged the IMF and the World Bank to refocus on their core missions — financial stability for the fund and pulling people out of poverty for the bank. Bessent praised the bank for shifting away from its ambitions to combat climate change and becoming a proponent of nuclear energy.

However, Bessent suggested that the IMF needed to “lead by example” and “get rid of their golf course out in Maryland” and instead focus more on global imbalances.

“This slow motion buildup of global imbalances after a lack of sustainable growth is the biggest risk,” Bessent said at an Institute of International Finance gathering on the sidelines of the spring meetings. “The world cannot take a China with a trillion dollar trade surplus.”

Bessent made no mention of the war in Iran and its impact on the global economy, which has alarmed the IMF and policymakers around the world.

The conflict has sent oil prices above $100 per barrel. Natural gas has spiked more than 80%, and surging fertilizer prices are raising costs for farmers.

The IMF laid out several scenarios for how the war could play out economically. The most severe case involves disruptions to energy markets that extend into next year. Such a scenario would drag global growth down to 2% and send inflation up to 6%.

“The downside risks are tremendous,” Gourinchas said.

Even a more optimistic case, in which the war concludes expeditiously and the Strait of Hormuz reopens, will leave behind economic carnage. The IMF estimates that oil prices will increase 21.4% this year and that energy commodity prices, which the fund had said would decline in 2026, will instead rise 19% this year.

Those higher commodity prices will flow through the economy, the IMF warned. That would raise costs of energy-intensive goods such as steel and cement, erode the purchasing power of consumers and most likely require central banks to raise interest rates.

© 2026 The New York Times Company