WASHINGTON, June 14 (Xinhua) -- U.S. President Donald Trump's trade and fiscal policies are likely to increase the risks to the U.S. and global economy, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) said Thursday.
The Trump administration's measures to impose new tariffs and restrict imports are likely to "move the globe further away from an open, fair and rules-based trade system, with adverse effects for both the U.S. economy and for trading partners," the IMF said in a report after concluding the Article IV consultation with U.S. authorities, an annual check-up of economic policies between the IMF and its member countries.
The IMF said the tariffs imposed or proposed by the Trump administration also risk "catalyzing a cycle of retaliatory responses from others, creating important uncertainties that are likely to discourage investment at home and abroad."
Meanwhile, it could interrupt global supply chains and damage a range of countries as well as the operations of U.S. multinational companies, said the Washington-based international lender.
Such measures could impact particularly some of the more vulnerable emerging and developing economies, the report said.
The IMF's warnings came after the Trump administration unilaterally imposed high tariffs on steel and aluminum imports on the grounds of national security, which had drawn strong opposition from the domestic business community and major U.S. trading partners.
"Unilateral trade actions can be disruptive and may even prove counterproductive to the functioning of the global economy and trading system," the IMF's Managing Director Christine Lagarde said Thursday at a press conference.
"As I have said before, in a so-called trade war, driven by reciprocal increases of import tariffs, nobody wins," she said. "Let us not understate the macroeconomic impact."
The IMF urged the Trump administration to work constructively with other trading partners to address trade and investment disputes.
"We, therefore, encourage the U.S. to work constructively with its trading partners to resolve trade and investment disagreements without resorting to the imposition of tariff and non-tariff barriers," she said.
Regarding the administration's fiscal policy, the IMF said in the report that such a strongly procyclical fiscal policy is quite rare in the U.S. context and has not been seen since the 1960s.
The combined effect of the administration's tax and spending policies will cause the federal government deficit to exceed 4.5 percent of the gross domestic product by 2019, which is nearly double the deficit three years ago, the report said.
"This fiscal path will provide a near-term boost to the U.S. and to many of its trading partners. However, it also increases the range and size of future risks, both for the U.S. and for the global economy," it said.
These risks include higher public debt, a greater risk of an inflation surprise, international spillover risks, the risk of future recession, and increased global imbalances. Enditem
