Two days later, we were informed that the United States<\/a> and Iran had agreed to a two-week ceasefire that would open the Strait. Then, as the ceasefire turned out not to be a ceasefire and the Strait stayed closed, US vice-president JD Vance<\/a> went to Islamabad to negotiate a peace deal. That failed. <\/p>\n Thereupon, Trump wrote on Truth Social that \u201cEffective immediately, the United States Naval Service … will begin the process of BLOCKADING any and all Ships trying to enter, or leave, the Strait of Hormuz\u201d. <\/p>\n Subsequently, the US explained that its blockade would cover \u201cthe entirety of the Iranian coastline\u201d including ports and oil terminals, and apply to all ships \u201cregardless of flag\u201d.<\/p>\n What can we make of all this? One point is that confusion is a feature, not a bug, in the Trumpian playbook. Yet unpredictability has consequences. The International Monetary Fund\u2019s<\/a> (IMF) latest world Economic Outlook (WEO) starts with a discussion of uncertainty. <\/p>\n The current war in the Middle East<\/a> is a big source of such uncertainty. The ups and downs of US trade policy under Trump are another, not to mention the war in Ukraine<\/a> and the ruptures in the western alliance. Not surprisingly, various measures of political and economic uncertainty are elevated. <\/p>\n Given this background, the IMF has in recent years taken a novel approach to its forecasts. Instead of the traditional \u201cbaseline\u201d, it presents a \u201creference forecast\u201d, based on the assumption that the disruptions caused by the war with Iran will fade by mid-2026. But it also adds \u201cadverse\u201d and \u201csevere\u201d scenarios. In the former, a more prolonged conflict would keep energy prices higher for longer. In the latter there would be even more extensive damage to energy infrastructure in the region.<\/p>\n On this week\u2019s episode of Inside Business, host Ciar\u00e1n Hancock speaks to Mayo entrepreneur Ciaran Crean. Ciaran is co-founder of Micksgarage.com, a business founded in 2004 selling car parts online. There have been a few bumps on the road since its foundation, but Micksgarage is currently in growth mode and has spun out a couple of businesses. One of those is WaveOMS, which provides software to Irish retailers looking to fulfil their online orders. Plus, IFAC chairman Seamus Coffey discusses the Government\u2019s \u20ac505 million package of supports in response to last week\u2019s fuel protests around the country. Is this money well spent? Will it be enough if the Middle East conflict drags on? And is it now a case that those who shout loudest will be appeased by the Government?Produced by John Casey with JJ Vernon on sound.<\/p>\n In the reference forecast, global growth is forecast to be 3.1 per cent this year and 3.2 per cent in 2027 \u2013 below the 3.4 per cent in 2024-25 \u2013 and to settle at the lower rate in the medium term. This would be well below the 2000-19 average of 3.7 per cent. This most recent forecast for global growth in 2026 is a mere 0.2 percentage points below that published last January. But, the WEO notes, absent the war, growth this year would have been revised upwards. Furthermore, inflation is expected to reach 4.4 per cent this year.<\/p>\n Under the IMF\u2019s adverse scenario, however, global growth would slow to 2.5 per cent in 2026 and inflation would reach 5.4 per cent. Under its still more severe scenario, global growth would be cut to around 2 per cent this year, while inflation would reach 5.8 per cent. <\/p>\n Thus, the economic impact of the war depends on what happens next: a cessation of hostilities and reopening of the Strait of Hormuz in the near future, at the benign end, or a prolonged and destructive conflict at the most malign.<\/p>\n The costs of the war are also unevenly spread; the burden is heavier in the conflict region, for commodity importers and countries with pre-existing fragilities. Needless to say, none of that seems to worry those who began it.<\/p>\n If we look at an even wider picture, we can identify more worrying and more cheering possibilities. On the former, as the IMF notes, \u201cdownside risks dominate\u201d. <\/p>\n We are, as Mark Carney<\/a> has noted, in an era of \u201crupture\u201d. The forces at work look not that dissimilar to those of the 1914-45 period, with huge shifts in relative power and ideological and technological upheavals. <\/p>\n Today, too, we can see many risks: geopolitical tensions; shocks to supplies of essential raw materials; trade disruptions; disappointment in the profitability of \u2013 and so a collapse of investment in \u2013 artificial intelligence<\/a> (AI); prolonged fiscal deficits and ever greater accumulations of public debt; and damage to crucial institutions, notably central banks, and a consequent destabilisation of inflation expectations. To be added to that list \u2013 albeit not by the IMF \u2013 is the collapse of the US as a benign hegemon: the language and attitudes of those promoting this war are its coup de gr\u00e2ce.<\/p>\n Yet there are also upsides. As the IMF rightly stresses, \u201cBefore the war, the global economy was performing better than expected\u201d. Notably, growth in tech exports, boosted by the AI boom, helped offset the drag of Trump\u2019s import tariffs<\/a>. The impact of the latter was also offset by the fast reorientation of global commerce in response to the trade war between the US and China<\/a>. So far, moreover, US protectionism has not spread worldwide.<\/p>\n More recently, the electoral defeat of Viktor Orb\u00e1n in Hungary<\/a> suggests that his style of politics \u2013 the marriage of corruption to culture wars \u2013 adopted by Trump and promoted by Russian president Vladimir Putin<\/a> can be defeated, provided elections are reasonably free, not least because this does not work. <\/p>\n Moreover, just as the world does not wish to follow Trump\u2019s protectionism, it does not (so far) wish to follow his newfound bellicosity. A demand for co-operation and peaceful relations still exists. Humanity has not yet entirely abandoned all it has learned for the follies of aggressive nationalism or supposedly sacred wars.<\/p>\n The IMF is describing a world far from the one hoped for by its creators in 1944. But the WEO shows that such a world has not yet died. What is at stake is not just peace and prosperity, but a concept of civilisation. Of that Putin and Trump have no notion. Some, however, still forget. \u2013 Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For how long can we manage to combine a resilient economy with chaotic politics? Can the answer really…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":403207,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[218,72,114,969,113,61,21326,11829,60,150432,9688,115,1963,1841,5936],"class_list":{"0":"post-403206","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-artificial-intelligence","9":"tag-business","10":"tag-china","11":"tag-donald-trump","12":"tag-economy","13":"tag-ie","14":"tag-international-monetary-fund","15":"tag-iran","16":"tag-ireland","17":"tag-israel-iran-conflict","18":"tag-ukraine-crisis","19":"tag-united-states","20":"tag-us-tariffs","21":"tag-viktor-orban","22":"tag-vladimir-putin"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403206","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=403206"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403206\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/403207"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=403206"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=403206"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=403206"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/1754647931518-c07d65db-55b5-463e-ae51-976300c5837e.jpeg\"\/)
Has the fuel protest shown that the loudest lobby generally gets what they want?<\/p>\n