Today’s briefing:
— Why the IMF is so chill…
— These ships are sitting ducks
— Here’s what diplomacy is really like
Your Insider’s briefing:
— Why the IMF is so chill…
— These ships are sitting ducks
— Here’s what diplomacy is really like
Good morning {{first_name | Intriguer}}. My late grandfather, an economist in Australia, was seconded to the IMF in Washington circa 1950. Upon learning I'd been posted to China, he asked how I would be getting to Beijing.
A flight, via Singapore, a day to unpack, then straight to the office, I said.
He laughed.
The trick in his day, he gleefully told me, was to time your final day in the office for the day after the last liner left Los Angeles for Sydney. That way, you'd get to go home the long way round... aka a two-month paid vacation with stopovers in New York, London, Marseille, Aden, Colombo and Melbourne.
But it's the $10 avocado toast that's wrong with my generation, right gramps?
Thank you for allowing me to vent, today's briefing on the IMF's World Economic Outlook just brought up a lot of feels for me…
 | Co-Founder John Fowler |
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Quote of the day
"My own speculation is that in the past two to three years, the real number [for GDP growth] on average might be around 2%, even though the official number is close to 5%."
That was Gao Shanwen, one of China's best-known market economists, back in December 2024. The remark saw him personally banned from public comment by Xi Jinping. Gao died Tuesday of cancer, aged 55, and Chinese social media has since filled with tributes to a man they’re calling the “truth-teller”.
IMF-ing fantastic
God bless their cotton spreadsheets, but the boffins at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) just dropped their latest economic outlook, and it’s edgier than the calm headlines suggest, starting with…
🌏 3% - Global GDP growth for 2026
That's only a 0.1% downwards revision since April, despite decades of Hormuz doomsday fears suddenly getting real via the Iran war. A fifth of the world’s oil supply gets squeezed, and the world economy basically says "cool, cool, anyway..."
How? It's partly because China's vast but opaque oil reserves cushioned the Hormuz blow, and partly because — for all the claims to the contrary — the Iranian regime's wartime resilience means President Trump is still hustling for an off-ramp.
But it's also because this chill headline masks some very non-chill shifts like...
📈 4.7% - Global inflation for 2026
Inflation has been steadily falling (aka disinflation) since those Covid days when used Rav4s somehow cost more than new ones, and bottles of Sriracha went for $20 via eBay.
But now, if this upwards IMF revision proves correct, we're potentially looking at the first meaningful break in our world's post-2022 disinflation trend.
What happened? The Iran war is transmitting through higher and more volatile commodity prices (energy, food, fertiliser), which is brutal if you're buying, and beautiful if you're selling.
But it's also beautiful if you're selling anything AI-related right now. In fact, the world's top four AI-linked hardware exporters (Taiwan, Korea, Thailand, and Malaysia) all get big growth surprises in this latest IMF outlook. Maybe not quite so surprising when you consider (say) Taiwan just saw its exports soar 50% the first half of this year.
As for the broader club of advanced economies...
🎩 1.7% - Advanced economy growth for 2026
That's relatively slow, and getting slower (down 0.1% since April). It’s partly just arithmetic: think base effect + less of that sweet sweet low-hanging fruit left to pick.
But it also hints at some of the deeper structural challenges we just explored via Japan (0.6%) but which also apply to Europe (0.9%) and beyond: think ageing and shrinking workforces, eroding fiscal buffers, and sluggish productivity.
Mario Draghi literally wrote the book on tackling those challenges, but it turns out reading all 400 pages was the easy part. Actually implementing them? His message is basically "do all the hard reforms you've been avoiding" — we made a meme about it.
But while the old rich world mostly cruises in the slow lane, take a look at...
🇮🇳 6.4% - India's growth for 2026
With a modest 0.1% slowdown since April, India is still the world's fastest-growing major economy by a long shot, with inter-related energy and currency shocks barely showing.
The nation is enjoying the twin tailwinds of favourable demographics and a good foothold in the global tech value chain. But the recent angry virality of a cockroach-themed joke party should be a reminder there's still plenty of work to translate those headline figures into opportunities for India’s 850 million people (!) under 35.
And while India is sprinting out in front, China is (if you want to believe the official stats) also putting up a respectable...
🇨🇳 4.6% - China's growth for 2026
It's actually one of the very few major economies getting a slight (0.2%) upgrade here.
Why? We flagged its stockpiled energy resilience above, but there's also its deep integration into many of those same global tech value chains.
And yet… a lot of that strength still rests on industrial policies that, sure, might help paper over slumps at home (property), but still keep angering more and more trading partners abroad, and risk simply piling up more debt for some bigger reckoning ahead.
Intrigue’s Take
Nice outlook you got there, IMF. Shame if any of your underlying assumptions were to unravel. And yet of course, the reality is several of the IMF’s assumptions look risky…
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Intrigue’s Take
Nice outlook you got there, IMF. Shame if any of your underlying assumptions were to unravel. And yet of course, the reality is several of the IMF’s assumptions look risky.
First, the entire update rests on the IMF’s increasingly improbable assumption that Hormuz will start re-opening from mid-July. More on that below, and no shade intended (this war flicks on and off like United’s wi-fi), but you need to be smoking plenty of hopium to realistically expect the status quo ante there any time soon.
Second, the projected 3.4% bounce in 2027 assumes this AI hyperscaler investment cycle keeps accelerating — the IMF isn’t even building huge AI productivity gains into its baseline yet. So maybe AI’s immediate productivity gains surprise us to the upside and leave the IMF’s baseline looking quaint. Or maybe enterprises start to baulk at eye-watering token costs, or frontier profits collapse into a price war. At that point, maybe the IMF’s “V-shaped recovery” narrative starts looking delusional.
And third, the IMF also assumes global financial markets will remain “accommodative” even as those Hormuz, AI, inflation, and demographic cross-currents swirl. That rests in part on the idea that those sweet sweet corporate earnings will keep capital flowing freely. But if (say) sticky inflation forces central banks to keep rates higher for longer, we could see wild asset repricing instead.
Now again, we’re not dunking on our friends at the IMF — they specifically flag the above as assumptions, not prophecies. It’s all more just to note that, beyond those chill “IMF says we’re fine” media headlines, there’s still some real white-knuckling going on.
PS — shout out to RH in our group-chat for coining today’s spicy email subject line! Want to join the conversation? Become an insider today!
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Meanwhile, elsewhere…
🇮🇳 INDIA — An enriched relationship.
Modi and Australian PM Albanese sealed a deal in Melbourne yesterday to unlock commercial Australian uranium exports to India, more than a decade after the two countries struck a civil nuclear deal. India wants 100GW of nuclear power by 2047, but because India is a non-NPT state, it took a decade of legal and safeguards work to get the deal done. (ABC News)
Comment: It must have been a jealousy-inducing sight for Albanese to witness ~30,000 people packed into Melbourne’s Marvel Stadium, beating drums, dancing, and chanting the Indian leader’s name as he took the stage.
🇻🇪 VENEZUELA — Counting the cost.
The UN has launched a $296M appeal to help 1.3 million Venezuelans after last month's twin earthquakes. The official death toll passed 3,800 yesterday and Caracas is now urging the UK and US to release its frozen gold and funds to help pay for recovery. (Euronews)
Comment: That call to release frozen assets puts the UK and US in a bit of a bind: refuse and be blamed for not helping, or release the funds and be blamed when at least some is siphoned away by corrupt elites.
🇮🇷 IRAN — Traffic report.
Tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz has “ground to a near halt” after two consecutive nights of US strikes on Iran, while President Trump has again floated seizing the Kharg Island terminal which handles ~90% of Iran's crude exports. (CNBC)
Comment: Bloomberg's tanker-tracking shows the US-backed Omani corridor sitting empty while only a trickle braves Iran's route.
✧ NATO — Rain check.
NATO is considering skipping next year's summit in Albania, with the alliance's top military officer telling Bloomberg TV the timing is now under discussion after Wednesday's Ankara declaration omitted any date. (Bloomberg)
Comment: NATO chief Mark Rutte said Albania will host but "we still have to decide on the exact timing". Albania is one of the alliance's lowest defence spenders, and nobody in Brussels is keen to give Trump such an easy platform to criticise European defence spending. Amusingly, Belgium's PM apparently flew home from the summit with the revolver and live ammo Erdoğan had gifted NATO leaders; it's now with Brussels airport police. Speaking of Turkey, there are rumours it’s about to announce the sale of its Russian S-400 air defences to the Emiratis, clearing a key legal hurdle for the US to sell F-35 jets to the Turks.
🇺🇦 UKRAINE — Sitting ducks.
Ukraine says its drones hit another 14 Russian vessels in the Sea of Azov overnight, including 12 shadow fleet tankers, taking its four-day tally to about 35 ships. Moscow has been forced to ban diesel exports until 31 July and will begin importing seaborne gasoline for the first time in decades. (PBS)
Comment: Ukraine's drone navy picked off Russian soldiers on a Black Sea gas rig earlier this year and is now hitting the tankers keeping Crimea and Russia's fuel economy afloat. With a third or more of Russian refining capacity offline (per industry and IEA estimates), Ukraine clearly thinks fuel is Russia's Achilles heel.
🇸🇾 SYRIA — In from the cold.
The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons restored Syria's rights and privileges yesterday. Those rights had been suspended since 2021 over Assad-era chemical attacks. On Wednesday, the Trump administration told Congress it intends to lift Syria's state sponsor of terrorism designation. (Al Jazeera)
Comment: Good news for Syria, whose rapid rehabilitation is nothing short of remarkable. The Qatar-drafted OPCW decision drew 67 co-sponsors, and OPCW inspectors now have a permanent in-country presence. The restoration is mostly symbolic, but the international legitimacy will help Ahmad al-Sharaa continue to rebuild Syria.
🇸🇩 SUDAN — Paper trail.
ICC deputy prosecutor Nazhat Shameem Khan told the BBC yesterday, after meeting survivors in eastern Chad, that investigators have made a "breakthrough", with evidence now linking the el-Geneina (2023) and el-Fasher (2025) massacres to leadership-level figures in the ‘Rapid Support Forces’ paramilitary. (BBC)
Comment: The court's Darfur investigation produced its first conviction only last October, more than 20 years after it was first set up (Janjaweed commander Ali Kushayb got 20 years). But as we wrote Monday, the RSF is besieging al-Obeid right now, and no 'legal breakthrough' will change the immediate facts on the ground.
Extra Intrigue
A little content for your (hopefully) lazy Sunday
Read: “‘Unique source’ blinded Dutch intelligence agencies to Putin’s invasion. What a f*** up.” (de Volkskrant)
Play: Map Tap (a stout test of your geography knowledge!)
Listen: Hans Zimmer in concert - live performances of iconic movie scores including Gladiator, The Dark Knight and Interstellar. (YouTube)
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Meme of the year (so far)
We normally keep our favourite memes of the week for our special, Insiders-only premium weekend edition. But this one, this absolute banger, from our resident meme-lord JD simply could not wait for Sunday. Enjoy!
Friday Quiz
With the Strait of Hormuz back in the headlines, here's a quiz on the world's great maritime pinch-points
The 'Bosphorus' takes its name from the ancient Greek for...
Fun facts (read after answering!)
Q1 - Zeus turned his mistress Io into a cow to hide her from Hera; Hera sent a gadfly; the tormented cow swam across the strait, hence 'Bous' + 'poros' = ox crossing (or so the Greeks claimed).
Q3 Travel writer Richard Halliburton paid 36c in 1928 to swim the entire canal over ten days ( he registered for transit as the 'SS Halliburton'!). Canal tolls are charged by tonnage, so he was billed on his body weight. An Army sharpshooter rowed alongside the whole way to deal with the alligators. Nearly a century later it's still the lowest toll in the canal's history. Today's biggest container ships pay well north of $500,000 a pass!