IMF's Lagarde warns of worse trade hit to global economy

The impact of escalating trade tensions on global growth are worse than feared just one month ago, and threatened US auto tariffs could cut a large chunk out of the world economy, the IMF said Wednesday.

Just last month, the International Monetary Fund warned of the dangers of the trade frictions -- notably between the United States and China, which have exchanged tariffs on hundreds of billions in products.

But IMF chief Christine Lagarde said those headwinds "could have slowed momentum even more than we had expected."
An IMF calculation "suggests that the resulting short-term losses could lower global GDP by about 3/4 per cent."
Lagarde warned the G20 gathering in Argentina that "the global economy faces a critical juncture." "We have had a good stretch of solid growth by historical standards, but now we are facing a period where significant risks are materialising and darker clouds are looming."