IMF Downgrades US Growth to 2.1% in 2017

The International Monetary Fund cut its outlook for the U.S. economy, removing assumptions of President Donald Trump’s plans to cut taxes and boost infrastructure spending to spur growth.

The IMF reduced its forecast for U.S. growth this year to 2.1 percent, from 2.3 percent in the fund’s April update to its world economic outlook. The Washington-based fund also cut its projection for U.S. growth next year to 2.1 percent, from 2.5 percent in April.

The world’s biggest economy will probably have a hard time hitting Trump’s target of 3 percent annual growth as it’s faced with problems ranging from an aging population to low productivity growth, and with a labor market already back at full employment, the fund said in its annual assessment of the U.S. economy released Tuesday.

Given broad uncertainty on policy, “we have removed the assumed fiscal stimulus from our forecast,” Alejandro Werner, director of the IMF’s Western Hemisphere Department, said at a press briefing in Washington.

The IMF’s assessment casts doubt over a more optimistic forecast in the White House budget proposal, which projects growth will accelerate to 3 percent by 2020 and keep up that pace for seven more years. Even with an “ideal constellation of pro-growth policies, the potential growth dividend is likely to be less than that projected in the budget and will take longer to materialize,” the IMF said in a statement Tuesday.

via Bloomberg

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