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Why the IMF is cutting global growth forecast
48m
At the 2026 World Bank/IMF Spring Meetings, Eurasia Group’s Rob Kahn joined GZERO’s Tony Maciulis to assess why the IMF has downgraded global growth to 3.1%.
“I think it’s bigger than that,” Kahn says, arguing the global economy is absorbing multiple shocks at once. While last year’s resilience surprised many, he warns that the war in Iran “and all the disruption that comes from it is a major shock,” with consequences stretching from energy markets to agriculture and critical global supply chains.
Looking ahead, Kahn says the outlook hinges on diplomacy: “Without peace, this is a story for 2026 and possibly beyond.” In the US, Kahn sees a split reality taking shape. While corporations post strong results, many households remain under pressure. “It is a slower growth story,” he notes, describing a “K-shaped economy” where economic strength is uneven heading into midterm elections.
This conversation is presented by GZERO Media in partnership with Microsoft. The Global Stage series convenes global leaders for critical conversations on the geopolitical forces reshaping our world.
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Getting more "bang for the buck" to fund critical global projects
2h
At the 2026 World Bank/IMF Spring Meetings, GZERO’s Tony Maciulis asked how development institutions prioritize investments when funding is limited, and global needs are growing.
The World Bank Group’s German Cufré argued that scarcity is forcing a shift toward smarter, more collaborative financing. Rather than competing, multilateral institutions are increasingly pooling resources to maximize impact. “Dollars are more scarce, so you need to squeeze more impact out of them,” Cufré said, pointing to a growing focus on partnerships that combine public funding with private capital.
With trillions of dollars needed for infrastructure, energy, and digital access, he emphasized that governments and development banks can’t fund solutions alone. Instead, their role is to de-risk investments, making it viable for the private sector to step in at scale. By sharing risk and aligning incentives, these partnerships can multiply impact, turning limited public dollars into significantly larger investments in emerging markets.
This conversation is presented by GZERO Media in partnership with Microsoft. The Global Stage series convenes global leaders for critical conversations on the geopolitical forces reshaping our world.
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How to prepare the global economy for the age of AI
18h
At the 2026 World Bank/IMF Spring Meetings, GZERO’s Tony Maciulis asked what it will take to prepare economies for the age of AI and how quickly it needs to happen. Microsoft’s Vickie Robinson was direct: “Yesterday.” But beyond urgency, she laid out what readiness actually requires: coordinated action across governments, development finance institutions, and the private sector, starting with clear policy signals that unlock investment at scale.
A major constraint, she noted, is cost. For AI to reach more people, regulators and industry must work together to reduce friction across the ecosystem, from devices and data to energy and connectivity. Without that, access risks remaining out of reach for much of the world. “Success is crossing that threshold,” Robinson said, emphasizing that progress depends on moving from connectivity to meaningful adoption.
This conversation is presented by GZERO Media in partnership with Microsoft. The Global Stage series convenes global leaders for critical conversations on the geopolitical forces reshaping our world.
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How the Iran war made China stronger
20h
The conventional wisdom was that a destabilizing war in the oil-producing heart of the Middle East would badly hurt China, the world's leading oil importer, and its sputtering economy. It hasn’t worked out that way. So far, China is weathering the US-Israeli war with Iran better than many of its neighbors and looks set to emerge relatively stronger.
Unlike Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump, who have launched wars against overmatched opponents only to face unwelcome surprises, President Xi Jinping has avoided unnecessary risks to position his country for long-term strength and stability. We saw Xi’s caution in his responses to both the COVID-19 pandemic and China’s structural economic weaknesses of recent years. We also saw it in Xi’s unwillingness to directly support Russia’s war in Ukraine, or even to recognize Putin’s territorial claims. Now we see it in Xi’s reluctance to criticize Trump’s bombing campaign against his allies in Tehran, or to come to Iran’s direct aid. The invitation for the US president to visit Beijing next month stands.
It helps that China is less damaged by this war than it would have been even a few years ago. Its oil stockpiles and strong refining capacity limit the risk of near-term fuel shortages. Pipeline gas imports and domestic gas production now ease its need for liquified natural gas from the Middle East. If the war drags on, Beijing can get more energy from friendly countries, particularly Russia, and can turn to both its vast coal reserves and its renewable power sources.
The war has even provided some advantages. China’s fully-integrated supply chains make it better able than rival exporters to contain production costs. And the continuing disruptions to energy shipments through the Strait of Hormuz, which have sharply increased both oil prices and the cost of insurance for shipping, will boost demand for China’s clean tech exports, lifting long-term investment in electrification while diversifying away from oil and gas. These processes were well underway before this war – they’re central to what Eurasia Group identified as 2026’s second-biggest geopolitical risk, the growing divergence between China’s electrostate and America’s petrostate models – but the conflict’s destruction of fossil-fuel infrastructure and fears of more to come will now accelerate them.
Strategically, China also benefits from a war that has weakened American firepower. The conflict has depleted US stockpiles of long-range cruise missiles and interceptors that will take years to rebuild. Those shortages are already rippling outward: THAAD components have been pulled from South Korea, Patriot batteries are unavailable for Ukraine and US allies in Asia, and the redeployment of US naval and air assets to the Middle East has thinned coverage in the Indo-Pacific. The cumulative effect is to erode American deterrence in the theaters where Beijing has the most at stake, while allies from Seoul to Tokyo quietly reassess how durable Washington’s security commitments really are. All of this deepens Washington’s already-acute dependence on Beijing’s exports of the critical minerals needed for the production of new weaponry and ammunition. The US could plausibly find workarounds to China’s restrictions in the next three to five years, but a decade is a more realistic timeframe. In the meantime, Trump will have a weaker negotiating hand with his Chinese counterpart, with whom he plans to meet in Beijing next month. China also benefits from ongoing damage to America’s reputation as a reliable international actor as both wealthy and developing countries look to hedge their bets on Washington’s foreign policy future.
Beyond those advantages, the war is giving China’s military planners a close look at how the US deploys air and naval power in real time, and how the Americans are now using AI on the battlefield. That’s valuable intelligence, particularly for any scenario involving Taiwan. Beijing has been watching the drone-based disruption tactics Iran has used against shipping in Hormuz and is considering how similar approaches could work in the Taiwan Strait, for instance in a quarantine scenario designed to test US responses without triggering a full military confrontation. China’s own advanced, low-cost offensive drone and anti-drone capabilities make this an increasingly attractive option.
If Xi faced democratic elections in a few months – with growth underwhelming, unemployment rising, and the Iran war's costs adding to his woes – he’d be tempted to exploit this moment. The US is maximally distracted and short on firepower, allies are hedging, and Washington is still dependent on Chinese minerals. What better time to move on Taiwan? Even short of invasion, a serious escalation could at least marginally improve Xi’s position, whereas doing nothing would risk a major defeat.
But of course, China’s strongman doesn’t face that pressure, and he’s not eager to take risks. His preference is for peaceful reunification with Taiwan, with military force as a last resort. He’s well aware that Chinese forces haven’t faced a shooting war since a border clash with Vietnam 47 years ago, and China has never fought a naval battle. His ongoing purge of Communist Party heavyweights with ties to the PLA, the most extensive since the 1980s, suggests Xi knows his military is not ready for a showdown.
China also wants to be seen as the responsible, stabilizing great power – the country others should want to draw closer to, not fear and hedge (as opposed to the United States under President Trump). The first meeting in over a decade between Xi and the leader of the Kuomintang, Taiwan’s largest opposition party, last week was designed to paint him as a constructive force committed to peaceful ties ahead of Trump’s visit to Beijing (as opposed to “troublemaker” Taiwanese President William Lai). The same logic drives Beijing’s broader posture on the global stage: a special envoy dispatched to the Middle East, a joint peace initiative issued with Pakistan, ceasefire proposals for Gaza and Russia-Ukraine. None of it has produced more than symbolic engagement, but that’s the point: all the reputational benefits of responsible great-power behavior, none of the costs.
Which is also why China feels no particular need to get directly involved in the Middle East war to come out ahead. Reports this week that it may have shipped shoulder-fired missiles to Iran – and Trump’s threat to slap 50% tariffs if true – are almost certainly less than meets the eye. Beijing’s longstanding practice has been to supply dual-use components that end up in Iranian missiles and drones while maintaining plausible deniability; overt weapons transfers during active hostilities with the US would be a sharp departure from decades of careful policy. Trump himself seemed skeptical, saying the reports “don’t mean much to me, because they're still fake,” and by Wednesday morning was posting that China had agreed not to send weapons. Neither side has any interest in blowing up the upcoming summit – let alone the bilateral relationship – over Iran.
China is increasingly confident it can win the peace without getting anywhere near the war. Trump won’t get the regime change in Tehran he set out to achieve anyway, and a resilient Iran can keep raising the costs for an increasingly unpopular superpower. Every day the war continues, more of the region’s governments conclude that good relations with Beijing are indispensable for reconstruction and long-term stability. Bilateral trade has tripled in the past two decades: China is the Middle East’s biggest oil customer, and the region has become an increasingly important market for Chinese exports, including green tech, cloud architecture, AI platforms, and smart city systems. China can also expect a seat at the table when the fighting stops, especially to ensure the Strait of Hormuz remains open long term – something Washington has made clear it considers the rest of the world’s problem.
All that said, if this war continues longer than a few more weeks, the calculus will start to shift against Beijing. The US naval blockade significantly curtails China’s oil imports from Iran. Beijing will avoid direct confrontation with Washington over it, but mounting economic pain will give China greater incentives to push harder for a negotiated end to the conflict. Chinese leaders also know that medium-term economic disruptions from further damage to Gulf energy infrastructure and threats to Chinese tech infrastructure remain a risk. It won’t help China’s flagging economy if markets in Asia and Europe – which together absorb roughly 60% of Chinese exports – suffer the kind of growth slowdown that cuts into demand for Chinese-made goods.
Xi also has to be nervous about Trump’s continued willingness to use unilateral military force to get what he wants from governments he sees as unfriendly. No doubt a politically-divided and dysfunctional United States creates real opportunities for Beijing, but these may be outweighed by the threat such a volatile and confrontational superpower poses to global peace and prosperity. Contrast this to Russia, a spoiler with nothing to lose from maximal instability.
In short, China can count itself among the very few winners in this war. But there are diminishing returns to US-induced chaos, and they run out fastest for the country with the most at stake in a stable, open world. At this point, Beijing wants the war to end more than it wants its core adversary to keep shooting itself in the foot.
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Another milestone for a bleak civil war
22h
Sudan marks a grim milestone today: three years of a civil war widely described as the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.
At least 59,000 people have been killed. There have been multiple accusations of genocide in Darfur. Fourteen million people – roughly a quarter of the population – have been forced from their homes, while 19 million face acute hunger. Now, the Iran war is driving up food and fuel prices in an already devastated economy.
And yet, there is still no end in sight to the fighting between the Sudanese army and its former ally, the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF). Drones have also expanded the battlefield, with those living far from the frontlines also facing threats – unmanned aerial vehicles have killed nearly 700 people so far in 2026, per the UN.
The conflict has grown more complicated due to murky foreign involvement. Three of the same countries that pushed for a humanitarian truce in November – the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt – along with Russia, have been accused of trying to shape the conflict through a mix of weapons transfers, financial and logistical support, and diplomatic backing.
Despite the international entanglement, the war in Sudan has drawn far less attention than the conflicts in Ukraine and, more recently, Iran.
It’s a topic Ian Bremmer discussed in a GZERO World interview last year with US Senator Mark Warner, who reflected on why the United States – under former President Joe Biden and in the early months of President Donald Trump’s second administration – had failed to act decisively. The Trump administration, for its part, has since led a delegation that presented both sides with a preliminary ceasefire proposal last year, but little has materialized.
Warner argued that neither side in Sudan’s civil war merits US support – “both teams are bad” – but said Trump, in particular, has a unique opportunity to pressure Saudi Arabia and the UAE to stop financing the violence. “It would be a huge policy win,” he said.
At the 2026 World Bank/IMF Spring Meetings, GZERO’s Tony Maciulis spoke with Microsoft’s Vickie Robinson and the World Bank Group’s German Cufré on why AI readiness depends on closing the digital access gap.
Despite progress, 2.2 billion people remain offline. “You need to cross the Rubicon from access to actual adoption,” Robinson said, noting that connectivity alone won’t unlock AI’s potential. Cufré emphasized that access must be tied to outcomes. “It’s not about connectivity itself… it’s about giving people the skills to use the devices,” he said, underscoring the need for a holistic approach that addresses devices, affordability, energy, and upskilling.
Both highlighted the importance of public-private collaboration to scale impact, particularly as development funding tightens and private investment becomes essential. Ultimately, Robinson argued, success means moving from access to adoption in a coordinated way so communities can fully participate in the AI economy.
This conversation is presented by GZERO Media in partnership with Microsoft. The Global Stage series convenes global leaders for critical conversations on the geopolitical forces reshaping our world.
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Iran threatens another waterway, Guyana sees economic boom, IMF warns of economic impact from Middle East conflict
April 15, 2026
There’s another waterway to worry about
While the world’s attention for the last month and a half has been on the Strait of Hormuz, it may soon switch to another vital shipping lane in the Middle East: the Red Sea. Why? On Wednesday, Tehran threatened to halt shipping there if the United States continued its blockade of ships that stopped at Iranian ports before exiting via Hormuz. Iran doesn’t border the Red Sea, which is located to the east of the Gulf, but it does have a proxy group operating along its banks: the Houthis. The Yemeni militant group has attacked ships in the Red Sea before, repeatedly doing so during Israel’s war with Hamas. If it renewed these strikes and halted shipping, this would put another dent in crude supplies. Before the Israel-Hamas war, 12% of total seaborne oil passed through the Red Sea. The Saudis, who have relied on the waterway since Hormuz’s closure, would be especially upset.
Guyana lives off oil exports, so why is the country in crisis now?
On the one hand, these are heady days for tiny Guyana, the South American country that only started producing oil in 2019. Crude exports have helped boost GDP by a dizzying average of 47% per year recently. And with oil prices now soaring due to the Iran war, the country is minting additional billions. But there’s a catch — and it’s at the gas pump. While Guyana produces oil, it relies entirely on foreign refiners for imports of fuels like gasoline and diesel. Disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz, which handles a fifth of global oil and gas exports, have caused prices for those refined products to soar as well, driving up Guyana’s gas import bill by nearly 40% in recent months. This has forced emergency rationing or gas pump closures in the capital, Georgetown. It’s yet another example of the complex ripple effects of the Iran conflict, even on the other side of the globe.
Iran war stress tests the global economy
At the start of this year, the global economy was “resilient,” IMF chief Kristalina Georgieva told Ian Bremmer during a GZERO World interview in Davos. But as the Strait of Hormuz’s closure sends energy prices soaring, severely damaging global output, that’s about to be tested. Meeting in Washington, D.C., for its Spring Meetings, the IMF warned Tuesday that even if the conflict ended today – and Iran loosened its grip on the Strait – global growth would slow to 3.1% this year, down from 3.4% in 2025. In the worst-case scenario, the war’s economic fallout could trigger a global recession. The damage of the conflict has already been done, the IMF argues. The question now is just how severe that damage will be.
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The extra cash comes just before Islamabad sends a $3.5 billion debt repayment to Saudi Arabia’s friend-turned-rival, the UAE. This isn’t the first time that Saudi Arabia has provided Pakistan, a relatively poor country with a mighty military, with funding. In 2018, Riyadh gave Pakistan a rescue package worth $6 billion as it faced an economic crisis. What’s the benefit to the Saudis? Pakistan provides the Kingdom with security by placing it under its nuclear umbrella. It has also deployed fighter jets to Saudi Arabia, amid Iranian bombing of the Kingdom.
Listen: “The Discography of Asha Bhosle.” If you’re looking for new music after Bieberchella, may I introduce you to the legendary Indian singer, Asha Bhosle, whose voice helped redefine modern Indian music. Born pre-independence in 1933, Asha tai (aunt) began performing as a child alongside her sister, Lata Mangeshkar, another one of the greats. Asha tai carved out her own lane: bold, playful, jazzy, and unmistakably versatile. Over a career spanning decades, she recorded thousands of songs, earned some of India’s highest honors, including the Padma Vibhushan, and received two Grammy nominations. She died this week at 92. Her catalog is vast, but “Abhi Na Jao Chhod Kar” is a perfect place to begin. – Suhani
Read: “East West Street.” This incredible piece of nonfiction by human rights lawyer Philippe Sands manages to intertwine so many things at once: the Nuremberg trials, the origins of the word “genocide,” a silent rivalry between leading lawyers, and family drama. The core of the book is about the battle between two Jewish, Eastern European lawyers – Raphael Lemkin and Hersch Lauterpacht – over whether to prosecute the Nazis’ actions during the Holocaust as a crime against individuals, or one against groups. At a time when the public debates whether Israel committed a genocide in Gaza, and courts hear a case over whether Myanmar did so against Rohingya Muslims, this 2016 book feels all too current. There’s personal drama, too: Sands explores his family’s own Holocaust past, and how some of them made it to safety. However, he quickly discovers that not all is as it seems with his grandparents. – Zac
Read: “Infinite Baseball.” Is baseball philosophical? Maybe. To find out, you have to read this book of essays by Alva Noë, a Berkley professor who specializes in the philosophy of consciousness who also happens to be a crazed baseball fan. Noë’s essays cover a lot of ground: the relationship between baseball and American culture, the sport’s unique niche as a “forensic” exercise, how baseball isn’t something we “watch” it’s something we “do,” and there’s even an unexpected defense of instant replay. Ultimately, Noë writes, “if baseball is boring, it’s boring the way philosophy is boring: not because there isn’t a lot going on, but because the challenge baseball poses is: making sense of it all.” Hear hear. – Alex
Physical AI is opening the door to massive economic potential. As intelligence moves into machines that can act in the real world, industries like robotics, mobility, and manufacturing are poised for transformation at global scale.
Discover how AI is getting physical with Bank of America Institute.
Chris, an Army veteran, started his Walmart journey over 25 years ago as an hourly associate. Today, he manages a Distribution Center and serves as a mentor, helping others navigate their own paths to success. At Walmart, associates have the opportunity to take advantage of the pathways, perks, and pay that come with the job — with or without a college degree. In fact, more than 75% of Walmart management started as hourly associates. Learn more about how over 130,000 associates were promoted into roles of greater responsibility and higher pay in FY25.
AI may be doing more than driving hype—it’s helping prop up the US economy. Harvard economist and former IMF Deputy Managing Director Gita Gopinath says a surge in AI investment helped offset the economic drag from tariffs. “The positive effect that came from AI offset the negative effect that came from tariffs,” she explains, noting that the two were “almost equivalent.”
As part of a larger conversation in the latest episode of GZERO World, Gopinath cautions that the longer-term impact is still uncertain. While US productivity has been strong, there’s no clear, economy-wide evidence yet that AI is driving those gains. Adoption remains early, and the path to profits is still unclear.
The takeaway: AI may be cushioning the economy for now—but its lasting impact is still an open question.
Last week, Microsoft shared a five‑point set of commitments to guide its Community‑First approach to building AI and cloud infrastructure in Canada. As the company moves from investment to implementation, these commitments reflect what communities across the country say matters most: affordable and reliable energy systems, sustainable water use, good jobs, strong public services, and access to the skills needed to succeed in an AI‑driven economy.
The Community‑First framework establishes a model for responsible infrastructure development—one that prioritizes affordability and sustainability while supporting long‑term economic opportunity. As demand for AI infrastructure accelerates, these commitments underscore a core principle: meaningful technological progress depends on growing in true partnership with the communities where this infrastructure is built.
Read the full blog here.
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Trump’s ceasefire deal with Iran
08 April