How low will global growth really be in early 2020?
The lowest global growth rate in recent history is -2% in early 2009, in the aftermath of the subprime crisis. The loss of growth at the time emanated from all regions, and to a lesser degree the United States. How low will global growth be in early 2020? The problem is that China’s official growth figures for the first quarter of 2020 risk being highly overestimated. When we calibrate China’s growth and PMIs, we see that in reality , Chinese GDP should be expected to grow at an annualised rate of 4% in the first quarter of 2020, giving global growth of 0.8% (higher than that recorded during the worst of the subprime crisis).