A global system of full economic integration'the aspiration of decades of negotiations and the worldwide underpinning of corporate strategy'has never been fully realized. The latest round of global trade talks sputtered to an inconclusive end in the early 2010s. But even as views on the benefits and fairness of the system diverged among countries, there was no overt challenge to the framework of global trade. That changed on April 2, 2025, when US tariff announcements revealed in stark fashion some of the underlying discontent with this construct. This article is a collaborative effort by Sven Smit, Shubham Singhal, Olivia White, Ezra Greenberg, Jan Mischke, Matt Watters, Cindy Levy, and Rebecca J. Anderson, representing views from McKinsey's Geopolitics and Strategy & Corporate Finance Practices and the McKinsey Global Institute. In the weeks since the announcements, share prices and the US Treasury market have gyrated. Expectations of US inflation have spiked. Consumer confidence has plummeted back to lows last seen in 2022, as inflation surged after the COVID-19 pandemic. In the first quarter, the US economy shrank by 0.3 percent, as companies pulled forward imports and inventories grew. Many analysts have raised their estimates of the probability of a global recession. After two years of nearly 3 percent real GDP growth, is the momentum in the US economy strong enough to work through these headwinds'...

Irenic is urging SSP to improve its profitability and believes the company's shares are undervalued, with potential to double in price. The investor, which manages approximately $1.4bn, has held discussions with SSP management but has not yet issued formal demands. It plans to increase its stake further. SSP has struggled to recover from the pandemic, facing persistent cost inflation and a slower-than-expected rebound in rail travel. Its adjusted operating margin dropped to 6% in 2023, from 8% in 2019, despite generating '219.2m in operating profit on '3.4bn in sales. The group's market capitalisation currently stands at '1.2bn. Led by CEO Patrick Coveney, SSP has said it remains focused on delivering its strategic priorities. 'While the pace of transition from Covid recovery to a business with demonstrably strong returns has been fast, it hasn't been fast enough,' Coveney noted in December. Subscribe to our Newsletter to increase your edge. Don't worry about the news anymore, through our newsletter you'll receive weekly access to what is happening. Join 120,000 other PE professionals today....

The Bureau of Economic Analysis released the latest U.S. gross domestic product data on April 30. In the first three months of 2025, it said, GDP contracted by 0.3%. The GDP growth rate captures the pace at which the total value of goods and services grows or shrinks. Together with unemployment and inflation, it usually receives a lot of attention as an indicator of economic performance. Some economists and analysts said the economy might not be as bad as this rate's decline might suggest. While this is the first time in three years that GDP has shrunk instead of growing, it is a relatively small decline. This raises a critical question: Does a relatively small GDP contraction mean the economy is in trouble' I have spent much of my working life studying economic well-being at the level of individuals or families. The GDP growth rate has many limitations as an economic indicator. It captures only a very narrow slice of economic activity: goods and services. It pays no attention to what is produced, how it is produced or how people assess their economic lives....

According to the New York Federal Reserve, labor conditions for recent college graduates have 'deteriorated noticeably' in the past few months, and the unemployment rate now stands at an unusually high 5.8 percent. Even newly minted M.B.A.s from elite programs are struggling to find work. Meanwhile, law-school applications are surging'an ominous echo of when young people used graduate school to bunker down during the great financial crisis. The first theory is that the labor market for young people never fully recovered from the coronavirus pandemic'or even, arguably, from the Great Recession. 'Young people are having a harder time finding a job than they used to, and it's been going on for a while, at least 10 years,' David Deming, an economist at Harvard, told me. The Great Recession led not only to mass layoffs but also to hiring freezes at many employers, and caused particular hardships for young people. After unemployment peaked in 2009, the labor market took time to heal, improving slowly until the pandemic shattered that progress. And just when a tech boom seemed around the corner, inflation roared back, leading the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates and cool demand across the economy. White-collar industries'especially technology'were among the hardest hit. The number of job openings in software development and IT operations plunged. The share of jobs posted on Indeed in software programming has declined by more than 50 percent since 2022. For new grads hoping to start a career in tech, consulting, or finance, the market simply isn't that strong....