Donald Trump has been warned by the west’s most influential economics thinktank that further escalation of the US-China trade war would unleash significant damage for the American economy, as well as the rest of the world.
The Paris-based Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development(OECD) said that an intensification of the dispute between Washington and Beijing would likely knock as much as 0.7% off the level of global GDP by 2021-22.
Under such a scenario, the hit to the world economy from higher tariffs could be quantified at almost $600bn (£472bn).
Issuing a downbeat assessment of the global economy as the standoff between the world’s two biggest economies continues to simmer, the OECD said the world’s economic momentum had weakened markedly and that growth was set to stay at a subpar rate as the tensions over trade persist. It said both the US and China stood to lose out from the imposition of higher tariffs. » | Richard Partington, Economics correspondent | Tuesday, May 21, 2019
