CRU: Inflation Pipeline Heats Up

By CRU Chief Economist Jumana Saleheen and Principal Economist Alex Tuckett from CRU’s Global Economic Outlook

This month has seen strong signs that the speed of the recovery in the global industrial sector is feeding through to costs throughout the supply chain. Although this does present a risk to our forecast, our baseline case remains that these pressures are temporary and will not dislocate the global recovery. News on the activity side has been limited this month, and we have changed our GDP and IP forecasts only marginally. Our forecast for growth in world GDP in 2021 remains at 5.8%, while we have revised up growth in Industrial Production (IP) from 7.7% to 7.8%.  We have further revised down our auto production forecasts for all major regions as the supply crisis in semi-conductors worsens and lengthens.