Economic Slowdown Felt Around the World

Whether it’s the Chinese manufacturing sector contracting or oils prices falling – signs of a global economic slowdown are plenty these days. The reasons are just as diverse, and include U.S.-China trade tensions, economic turmoil in countries like Argentina, Turkey and Venezuela, a weak German automobile sector and interest rates which are slowly increasing again.

IMF chief economist Gita Gopinath has called the current state of the global economy a “significantly weakened global expansion” and data from her organization proves that global economies are in fact still growing, but at an increasingly lower rate.

Both Europe and the Americas exhibited slow growth of 2.2 percent of GDP in 2018. Western Europe was affected more gravely than Eastern Europe, with traditional developed economies suffering from the slowdown most. Japan only grew at 0.8 percent and Italy at 0.9 percent. Germany, which only narrowly avoided a recession in the third quarter of 2018, grew by 1.5 percent. The Chinese economy still managed to grow by 6.6 percent in 2018 but that growth has also been getting smaller each year since 2010.

The Asia pacific region still exhibited the biggest growth rate and is projected to remain the strongest growth region amidst the slowdown, with Africa expected to catch up somewhat by 2023.