Global Industrial Production and Trade Show Activity Stalling Since Late Last Year

Key points

• Recent trends in global industrial production and trade show activity stalling since late last year. The pace of service sector activity has remained steadier.
• Tariff increases and trade disputes have contributed to the weakness in production and trade and have added uncertainty to the global economic outlook.
• In response to weaker production activity and continued low inflation, central banks in many economies have either loosened monetary policy or positioned themselves to do so, which has been reflected in financial markets.
• Taking these forces into account, we have reduced our forecast for global GDP growth this year slightly to 3¼ per cent. This is likely to be, by a small margin, the slowest annual growth for a decade. We expect output growth to show a slight pick-up in 2020 to 3½ per cent.