The International Monetary Fund slashed its global growth forecast once again, predicting economic growth will fall to its weakest rate since the financial crisis a decade ago. The IMF said that the world economy is in a “synchronized slowdown,” and will only expand by 3 percent this year. At one point last year, the IMF forecasted 3.9 percent growth for 2019. “Growth continues to be weakened by rising trade barriers and increasing geopolitical tensions,” the Fund said in a statement. Needless to say, the ongoing U.S.-China trade war looms large in the analysis. “We estimate that the US-China trade tensions will cumulatively reduce the level of global GDP by 0.8 percent by 2020.” There are country-specific problems in emerging markets (Argentina, Iran and Turkey, for instance), but the world is also facing structural issues, such as low productivity growth and aging demographics, the IMF added. A dramatic slowdown in […]