The World Bank’s latest estimate is that the Mexican economy will grow by 1.3% in 2026, a decrease from its 1.4% October forecast and a more significant reduction from the 1.6% growth it predicted for 2026 in January 2025.
According to the World Bank’s semi-annual Global Economic Prospects report released on Tuesday, the lower forecast is largely owing to the upcoming review of the USMCA free-trade agreement, which puts its trade with the U.S. under threat.
On a global level, the World Bank expects output growth to slow slightly to 2.6% in 2026, compared to 2.7% in 2025, but shows resilience by rising back up to 2.7% in 2027.
The organization revised its 2026 GDP forecast upwards by two-tenths of a percentage point from June estimations, which still puts it in the slowing category, since the final 2025 growth will be four-tenths of a percentage point higher than previous forecasts.
The recent global improvement reflects better-than-expected growth in the United States despite tariff-driven trade disruptions, according to the World Bank. It expects the U.S. to achieve a GDP growth of 2.2% in 2026, an improvement on its 2.1% in 2025.
Nevertheless, the sum of the forecasts implies that the current decade is performing weakly and could end with the slowest global growth since the 1960s. That possibility carries with it real-world pain, with higher levels of unemployment in emerging markets and developing countries, according to the World Bank.
Global GDP per person in 2025 was 10% higher than it was on the eve of the COVID-19 pandemic, the World Bank’s chief economist, Indermit Gill, said in a statement. This marks the fastest recovery from a major crisis in the past 60 years.
However, many developing countries are being left behind.
“While nearly all advanced economies will be richer in per capita income than they were before the pandemic, one out of four developing countries — and more than a third of all low-income economies — will be poorer than they were five years ago,” stressed Gill in his own italics.
Even though growth in emerging markets and developing economies is forecast to decrease from 4.2% in 2025 to 4% in 2026, those percentages mark a two-tenths and three-tenths of a percentage point increase from June forecasts.
Meanwhile, China’s economic growth rate forecast for 2026 remains unchanged from 2025, at 3.7%, according to the World Bank.
With reports from Reuters, El Economista and Proceso
