Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at G-7 efforts to stabilize the global market, Israel’s naval blockade of Gaza, and an Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda.

Fears of a Global Recession

More than a year after U.S. President Donald Trump imposed sweeping tariffs on virtually all U.S. trading partners, the White House is now asking these same allies for help stabilizing the fraught global market.

Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at G-7 efforts to stabilize the global market, Israel’s naval blockade of Gaza, and an Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda.

Fears of a Global Recession

More than a year after U.S. President Donald Trump imposed sweeping tariffs on virtually all U.S. trading partners, the White House is now asking these same allies for help stabilizing the fraught global market.

G-7 finance ministers and central bank governors convened in Paris on Monday for two days of meetings to discuss the economic fallout of the Iran war, including rising crude prices and growing bond market volatility.

Among the group’s biggest concerns is that disruptions to oil markets could slow growth, increase inflation, and ignite a possible global recession. “When oil prices hover above $100 and there is already impact of this war baked in, inevitably there would be a response,” Kristalina Georgieva, the head of the International Monetary Fund, said on Monday, regarding the global bond market sell-off that has transpired in recent days.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is hoping to promote economic unity within the G-7 to combat some of these risks. However, heading into the Monday meeting, his focus appeared to be on rallying allies to tighten international sanctions on Iran. “We call upon all our G-7 and indeed all of our allies and the rest of the world to follow the sanctions regime, so that we can crack down on the illicit finance that is fueling the Iranian war machine and get this money back to the Iranian people,” Bessent said.

However, such unity may be difficult for Washington to come by after Trump spent the better part of his second term criticizing and even threatening the United States’ closest........

© Foreign Policy