Economics
IMF sees ‘bumps’ in path to lower inflation
The International Monetary Fund warned Tuesday that upside risks to inflation have increased, calling into question the prospect of multiple Federal Reserve interest rate cuts this year.
In its latest World Economic Outlook update, the IMF said “the momentum on global disinflation is slowing, signaling bumps along the path.” The rise in sequential inflation in the U.S. earlier in 2024 has put it behind other major economies in the quantitative easing path, the report said.
The report comes as traders ramp up bets for a Fed rate cut in September. Per the CME Group’s FedWatch tool, Wall Street has priced in a 100% chance of lower rates at the Sept. 18 meeting. Traders also expect another rate decrease in November.
However, IMF chief economist Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas told CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street” on Tuesday that one rate cut from the Fed is most appropriate this year, highlighting still-stubborn services and wage inflation as complications to the path to lower inflation.
Gourinchas said that while the robust wages and service inflation are “not necessarily a source of worry,” they are points of concern for the U.S. economy. His comments came after the U.S. Labor Department said the consumer price index grew last month at its slowest year-over-year pace since April 2021.
Despite the encouraging CPI report, Gourinchas stated the uptick in inflation earlier in the year indicates that the path toward lower inflation and rate cuts “could take a little bit longer than maybe the markets are expecting.”
“We’re more in the camp that there could be some cuts in the latter part of the year but maybe just one, or 2024 and maybe the rest of 2025,” Gourinchas said.
Across advanced economies globally, the IMF forecasts the rate of disinflation to slow in 2024 and 2025 due to broadly high service inflation and commodity prices.
Concerning the U.S. economy, the financial institution lowered its growth outlook by 0.1 percentage point to 2.6% in 2024 on cooling consumption and slower-than-expected growth at the start of the year.
Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey attends the central bank’s Monetary Policy Report press conference at the Bank of England, in the City of London, on May 8, 2025.
Carlos Jasso | Afp | Getty Images
Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey told CNBC on Thursday that the U.K. was heading for more economic uncertainty, despite the country being the first to strike a trade agreement with the U.S. under President Donald Trump’s controversial tariff regime.
“The tariff and trade situation has injected more uncertainty into the situation… There’s more uncertainty now than there was in the past,” Bailey told CNBC in an interview.
“A U.K.-U.S. trade agreement is very welcome in that sense, very welcome. But the U.K. is a very open economy,” he continued.
That means that the impact from tariffs on the U.K. economy comes not just from its own trade relationship with Washington, but also from those of the U.S. and the rest of the world, he said.
“I hope that what we’re seeing on the U.K.-U.S. trade side will be the first of many, and it will be repeated by a whole series of trade agreements, but we have to see that happen of course, and where it actually ends up.”
“Because, of course, we are looking at tariff levels that are probably higher than they were beforehand.”
In Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Report released Thursday, the word “uncertainty” was used 41 times across its 97 pages, up from 36 times in February, according to a CNBC tally.
The U.K. central bank cut interest rates by a quarter percentage point on Thursday, taking its key rate to 4.25%. The decision was highly divided among the seven members of its Monetary Policy Committee, with five voting for the 25 basis point cut, two voting to hold rates and two voting to reduce by a larger 50 basis points.
Bailey said that while some analysts had perceived the rate decision as more hawkish than expected — in other words, leaning toward holding rates elevated than slashing them rapidly — he was not surprised by the close vote.
“What it reflects is that there are two sides, there are risks on both sides here,” he told CNBC.
“We could get a much more severe weakness of demand than we were expecting, that could then pass through to a weaker outlook for inflation than we were expecting.”
“There’s a risk on the other side that we could get some combination of more persistence in the inflation effects that are gradually working their way through the system,” such as in wages and energy, while “supply capacity in the economy is weaker,” he said.
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