This research was published on April 10, 2025 On April 2, President Trump followed through on campaign promises to steeply hike tariffs on U.S. trading partners, taking the average effective tariff rate to around 23%, a near 10-fold increase of the rate last year. As sharp and severe selloffs in financial markets underline the global […]

This report assesses the global macroeconomic impact of April 2 tariffs (“reciprocal” tariffs), covering primary impact channels (supply and demand shocks), multiple secondary impact channels, as well as plausible longer-term (structural) impact.

Today, new risks—specifically, new uncertainties—are rising, clouding the outlook and undermining confidence in continued growth built on a healthy U.S. consumer and strong economic momentum. Yet these risks cannot be assessed by translating uncertainty into the certainty of negative outcomes. Risks are up, but we should not rush to recessionary conclusions.

Today’s executives are navigating a landscape where risks are up and visibility is down. Trump’s deliberate uncertainty has added new risks, but the death of the current economic expansion is not as clear cut as current public discourse likes to paint it.

The global trade order is likely to be strained in ways unseen in decades—requiring continuous reassessment.

Predictions of technology-driven job destruction have a long history and correspondingly, a long record of failure. Angst about worker obsolescence ebbs and flows with each new generation of technology.