In its latest quarterly forecast update, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) slightly raised its global growth forecasts for 2025 and 2026.

Shared July 29, IMF’s report projects worldwide economic growth of 3.0% in 2025 and 3.1% in 2026 — up from the 2.8% and 3.0% forecasted in IMF’s April report. Those figures would still be behind the global pre-pandemic average of 3.7% from 2020-2019.

In the U.S., IMF projects economic growth will remain steady at 1.9%, — up 0.1-percentage-point from its April forecast, while projecting 2.0% 2026 growth that is up 0.3 points from April..

That U.S. forecast is far ahead of the 1.5% 2025 growth IMF expects for all advanced economies, with projections for 1.6% growth in 2026, both up 0.1-point from April’s estimate.

MDM’s 2Q25 MarketPulse Report (store link) 

Global growth remains affected by trade tensions, though the U.S. has paused higher tariffs for most trading partners, and eased tensions with China in May, lowering its effective tariff rate from 24% to about 17%.

For emerging markets and developing economies, IMF expects 2025 growth of 4.1% and will hold steady at 4.0% in 2025. Within that it has Mexico at 0.2% in 2025 and 1.4% in 2026.

According to the report, IMF’s key findings include:

• Anticipation of tariffs led to a surge in exports to the U.S. in the first quarter, supporting activity in Europe and Asia
• Financial conditions improved and monetary policies eased as global inflation continued to decline, consistent with prior projections
• The U.S. dollar depreciated about 8% since January. IMF said that unlike past cases where tariffs led to currency appreciation in the tariffing country, this depreciation has intensified the tariff impact on other countries’ competitiveness. The Chinese RMB remained stable against the dollar, while the euro appreciated significantly.

To read more about the IMF report, click here.