The Duty-Free AI Boom and a Slowing Global Economy: Supply Lines

One persistent theme at last week’s International Monetary Fund and World Bank annual meetings was the resilience of the global economy to the Trump tariff shock. For which there are myriad explanations, from the delayed pass-through in prices to a growing list of carveouts to the now infamous TACO market meme.

The reality, reinforced by the IMF in its latest World Economic Outlook, is that the negative effects of tariffs are there and plain to see if you know where to look. Just about every economy in the world is growing slower than it would otherwise have been. The drag ...