The Cost of War: A 360° View of the Global Economy in April
The data I’m using to see what’s going on with the markets right now.
The war that began on February 28 with U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran is not an abstraction for portfolio managers or macroeconomists. It is a live transmission mechanism, converting geopolitical risk into commodity prices, commodity prices into inflation, and inflation into the kind of slow-burn fiscal pressure that turns manageable debt into systemic stress.
The headline numbers still look defensible. Global growth is projected at around 3.3 percent for 2026, according to the IMF’s January update, revised slightly upward from October, on the back of AI-driven investment, resilient U.S. consumption, and fiscal accommodation in key emerging markets. But that number was struck before February 28. The world that produced it no longer exists.
The spread between these forecasts tells you something the central estimates do not. The divergence between the IMF’s 3.3 percent and UNCTAD’s 2.7 is a disagreement about how much pain the war premium will inflict on energy-importing regions, and how quickly financial conditions tighten when sovereigns with elevated debt face a new supply shock. That question is, in April 2026, very much open.
The Strait That Moves the World
There is a passage of water roughly 33 kilometres wide at its narrowest point that connects the Persian Gulf to the Gulf of Oman. Through it flows, in normal times, roughly a fifth of the world’s seaborne oil and the bulk of Qatar’s LNG exports. Since late February, normal times have ended.
QatarEnergy's CEO confirmed that Iranian strikes disabled two of the country's 14 LNG trains and one of its two gas-to-liquids facilities, removing 12.8 million tonnes per year of production capacity. The repair timeline: three to five years. Force majeure has been declared on contracts with customers in Italy, Belgium, South Korea, and China.