Economic news

Experts warn of slowing economy after score based on Americans’ financial outlooks fell by 32% since January

US consumer sentiment plummeted in April after Donald Trump’s trade war threw the global economy into chaos, according to a new report.

The index of consumer sentiment, a score based on a monthly survey asking Americans about their financial outlooks, fell by 32% since January – the largest drop since the 1990 recession, according to the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research.

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Few policymakers mention US president by name, but his tariffs dominate IMF-World Bank meeting

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Kristalina Georgieva’s favourite film, the International Monetary Fund boss told the audience at a packed panel event in Washington on Thursday, is Tom Hanks’s cold war romp Bridge of Spies.

In one of the stranger digressions in a frequently strange week, Georgieva recalled the moment when Hanks’s character, a US lawyer, tells the Soviet spy he has been appointed to defend that he will probably be executed. “You don’t seem alarmed,” Hanks says to him; to which the spy – played by Mark Rylance – replies, “Would it help?”

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In Washington, UK chancellor stresses work being done to improve economic links with Europe

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Rachel Reeves has said the UK’s trading relationship with the EU is “arguably even more important” than that with the US, as she prepared to lobby her American counterpart, Scott Bessent, over tariffs.

Speaking in Washington, the British chancellor told the BBC she was keen to see trade barriers with the US come down.

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