{"id":"f-993d06a2ab-b42c5d72-2cb7-50b5-8082-ba76767a6e06","title":"War with Iran Impacts Global Economy Amid Rising Energy Prices","description":"The ongoing war with Iran is significantly impacting the global economy, driving up energy prices and threatening food security in vulnerable regions, as experts analyze the implications for inflation and economic stability.","timestamp":1773136514,"category":"international","headline":"War with Iran Impacts Global Economy Amid Rising Energy Prices","modifiedHeadline":"How Iran War Triggers Global Economic Worries!","subCategories":["scid_edbc7f13"],"subcategoriesName":["Economy"],"region":"IN","bundleMetaData":{"bundleId":"c80449a0-0ad6-472b-8d17-5747dd8f5c83","bundleTitle":"Around the globe","cardData":null},"iabCategoryId":"389","fcSummary":"the conflict with iran, triggered by missile strikes and iran's closure of the strait of hormuz, is significantly impacting the global economy. energy and fertilizer prices have surged, threatening food shortages, destabilizing nations like pakistan, and complicating inflation management for central banks. higher oil prices are driving up gasoline costs and potentially wiping out tax cut benefits for many americans. the situation creates economic winners and losers, with energy importers facing hardship while producers benefit.","summary":"Iran war disrupts global economy, surging energy prices threaten food security & fuel inflation worries. Key shipping route blocked.","ctaUrl":"https://trends.glance.com/newz/India_News/IN/en/et-now/f-993d06a2ab-b42c5d72-2cb7-50b5-8082-ba76767a6e06","sourceUrl":"https://www.etnownews.com/agency-news/war-with-iran-impacts-global-economy-amid-rising-energy-prices-article-153799122","bannerImage":"https://g-mob.glance-cdn.com/public/fc/image/LiCaPncSR730.webp","content":"

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WASHINGTON (AP) — The war with Iran is doing collateral damage to the world economy. The conflict is driving up energy and fertilizer prices; threatening

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food shortages in poor countries; destabilizing fragile states such as Pakistan; and complicating options for the inflation fighters at central banks like the Federal Reserve.

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Causing much of the pain: Iran shut down the Strait of Hormuz — through which a fifth of world’s oil passes — after the U.S. and Israel launched missile strikes on February 28 that killed Iranian leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.\n
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\n“For a long time, the nightmare scenario that deterred the U.S. from even thinking about an attack on Iran and which got them to urge restraint on Israel was that the Iranians would close the Strait of Hormuz,” said Maurice Obstfeld, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund. “Now we’re in the nightmare scenario.”\n
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\nWith a key shipping route cut off, oil prices have surged — from less than $70 a barrel on February 27 to a peak of nearly $120 early Monday before settling closer to $90. They’ve taken gasoline prices with them.\n
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\nAccording to AAA, the average price of U.S. gasoline has shot up to $3.48 a gallon from just under $3 a week ago. Prices could be felt even more significantly in Asia and Europe, which are more dependent on Middle Eastern oil and gas than the United States.\n
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\nEvery 10% increase in oil prices — provided they persist for most of the year — will push up global inflation by 0.4 percentage points and reduce worldwide economic output by as much as 0.2%, said Kristalina Georgieva, managing director of the International Monetary Fund.\n
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\n“The Strait of Hormuz has to be reopened,” said economist Simon Johnson of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and recipient of the 2024 Nobel memorial prize in economics. “It’s 20 million barrels of oil a day going through there. There’s no excess capacity anywhere in the world that can fill that gap.”\n
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\nThe world economy has shown it can take a punch, absorbing blows from the Russian invasion of Ukraine four years ago and from President Donald Trump’s massive and unpredictable tariffs in 2025.\n
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\nMany economists express hope that global commerce can stagger through the latest crisis.\n
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\n“The world economy has shown itself capable of shaking off significant shocks like broad U.S. tariffs, so there is room for optimism that it will prove resilient to the fallout of the war on Iran,” said Eswar Prasad, professor of trade policy at Cornell University.\n
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\nEspecially if oil prices can fall back to the $70-to-$80-a-barrel range, wrote economist Neil Shearing of Capital Economics, “the world economy may absorb the shock with less disruption than many fear.”\n
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\nBut a lot of ifs remain.\n
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\n“The question is how long is it going to go on?” said Johnson, also former IMF chief economist. “It’s hard to see Iran backing down now that it’s announced this new leader” – Mojtaba Khamanei. The son of the slain ayatollah is believed to be even more of a hardliner than his father.\n
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\nAlso muddying the outlook for an end to the crisis is uncertainty about what the United States is trying to achieve. “This is all about President Trump,” Johnson said. “It’s not clear when he’s going to declare victory.”\n
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\nFor now, the war is likely to create economic winners and losers.\n
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\nEnergy importers — most of Europe, South Korea, Taiwan, Japan, India, and China — will get clobbered by higher prices, Shearing wrote in a commentary for London’s Chatham House think tank.\n
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\nPakistan finds itself in an especially bleak position. The South Asian country imports 40% of its energy and relies especially heavily on liquified natural gas from Qatar, supplies of which have been cut off by the conflict. Higher energy prices will squeeze Pakistani families and damage their economy.\n
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\nFar from cutting interest rates to provide some relief, though, the country’s central bank will probably have to raise them instead, say economists Gareth Leather and Mark Williams of Capital Economics. That is partly because inflation remains uncomfortably high in Pakistan — and higher energy prices threaten to make it worse.\n
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\nBut oil-producing countries outside the warzone — Norway, Russia, Canada — will benefit from high oil prices without the risk of missile and drone attacks.\n
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\nEnergy isn’t the only issue. Up to 30% of world fertilizer exports – including urea, ammonia, phosphates, and sulfur – pass through the Strait of Hormuz, according to Joseph Glauber of the International Food Policy Research Institute.\n
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\nDisruption in the Strait has already cut off fertilizer shipments, raising costs for farmers – and is likely pushing food prices higher.\n
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\n“Any countries with significant agriculture sectors, including the United States, would be vulnerable,” Obstfeld said. “The effects are going to be most devastating in low-income countries where agricultural productivity may already be challenged. Add this extra cost component and you get the prospect of significant food shortages.”\n
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\nThe United States, now a net exporter of energy, should gain slightly overall from higher oil and gas prices. But ordinary families will feel the pain at a time when Americans are already furious about high costs ahead of November’s midterm elections.\n
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\nU.S. households pay an average of $2,500 a year, or nearly $50 a week, to fill up their cars, said Mark Mathews, chief economist at the National Retail Federation. A 20% increase in gasoline prices means an extra $10 a week out of their budgets, forcing them to cut back elsewhere. “If I have to pay more for an essential, then I would reduce a discretionary item,” Mathews said.\n
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\nIf oil prices remain around $100 a barrel, analysts at Evercore ISI calculated, the resulting higher gasoline prices will wipe out for most Americans the benefits of higher tax refunds this year arising from Trump’s 2025 tax cuts. Only the top 30% would still see a gain.\n
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\nThe Iran crisis also puts the world’s central banks in a bind. Higher energy prices feed inflation. But they also hurt the economy. So should central bankers raise rates to curb inflation — or cut them to give the economy a lift?\n
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\nThe Fed is already divided between policymakers who think a weak American job market needs help from lower rates and those still worried that inflation remains stuck above the central bank’s 2% target.\n
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\n“Their minds will easily go to the 1970s,” Johnson said, when conflict in the Middle East and an Arab oil embargo sent oil prices rocketing. Central bankers are haunted by the memory that their predecessors “didn’t get it right in the 1970s. They thought it was a temporary shock. They thought they could accommodate with lower interest rates, and they ended up regretting that because inflation became much higher.”\n
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\nJohnson predicted that higher energy prices ignited by the war with Iran are “going to massively intensify the debate inside the Fed” and make U.S. rate cuts less likely.\n
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\nAP Retail Writer Anne D’Innocenzio in New York and AP Economics Writer Christopher Rugaber in Washington contributed to this report.\n
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War with Iran Impacts Global Economy Amid Rising Energy Prices

SUMMARY