The IMF is NVO. That stands for not very optimistic. Live from the UK, this is the Marketplace Morning Report from the BBC World Service. I'm Gideon Long in for Leanna Byrne. Good morning. The IMF, the International Monetary Fund has given its assessment of the global economy, and it's not pretty. The fund has slashed its forecast for world growth to 2.8%.

Down from the 3.3% it was predicting just three months ago.

It describes Donald Trump's tariffs as a major negative shock to growth.

The BBC's Mariko OI is in Singapore.

Hi, Mariko.

Hi, Gideon.

So let's start with China, the IMF, pretty big downgrade from 4.6% back in January to 4% now.

I guess that is primarily due to tariffs, right?

Yes, I think it's fair to assume that. I mean, you know, it's not just China, is it?

It's practically every country almost on the planet that has seen this downgrade.

And it's all because of those tariffs that were announced on what the White House would like to call Liberation Day, where they announced all these new tariffs.

Some of them have been paused until early July.

But of course, the ones on China have gone ahead. And also there are other

tariffs on cars imported into the United States and so on and so on. But I think everyone has

realized as soon as Mr. Trump made that announcement that the key target is China. And as a result

of that, China is seeing this growth forecast by the IMF significantly lowered.

And has there been any reaction from Beijing to the IMF downgrade?

Because as you say, that's now a one percentage point gap between what the IMF says the Chinese economy will grow at

and what China says it will grow at.

Beijing has been quite tight-lipped about all the, you know, tip for tat on these tariffs.

There have been various announcements from Beijing. They have stuck with one simple message.

They don't agree with it. They will challenge it. They will retaliate. You know, they took the

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