There will be much to chew over at the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) spring meetings this week.

Central bankers and finance ministers will descend on Washington for its latest bi-annual gathering, a place where politicians and academics converge, all of them trying to make sense of what’s going on in the global economy.

Everything and nothing has changed since they last met in October.

One man continues to dominate the agenda.

Six months ago, delegates were wondering whether Donald Trump could win the November election and what that might mean for tax and tariffs. How far would he push it? Would his policy match his rhetoric?

This time round, expect iterations of the same questions. Will the US president risk plunging the world’s largest economy into recession?

Yes, he put on a bombastic display on his so-called “Liberation Day”, but will he now row back? Have the markets effectively checked him?

Behind the scenes, finance ministers from around the world will be practising their powers of persuasion, each jostling for meetings with their US counterparts to negotiate a reduction in the tariffs set by the Trump administration.

That includes our own chancellor, Rachel Reeves, who is still holding out hope for a trade deal with the US – although she is not alone in that.

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Are we heading for a recession?

The IMF’s economists have already made up their minds about Trump’s potential for damage.

Last week, they warned about the growing risks to financial stability after a period of turbulence in the financial markets, induced by Trump’s decision to ratchet up US protectionism to its highest level in a century.

By the middle of this week the organisation will publish its World Economic Outlook, in which it will downgrade global growth but stop short of predicting a full-blown recession.

Others are less optimistic.

Kristalina Georgieva, the IMF’s managing director, said last week: “Our new growth projections will include notable markdowns, but not recession. We will also see markups to the inflation forecasts for some countries.”

She acknowledged the world was undergoing a “reboot of the global trading system,” comparing trade tensions to “a pot that was bubbling for a long time and is now boiling over”.

She went on: “To a large extent, what we see is the result of an erosion of trust – trust in the international system, and trust between countries.”

Don’t poke the bear

It was a carefully calibrated response. Georgieva did not lay the blame at the US’s door and stopped short of calling on the Trump administration to stop or water down its aggressive tariffs policy.

That might have been a choice. To the frustration of politicians past and present, the IMF does not usually shy away from making its opinions known.

Last year it warned Jeremy Hunt against cutting taxes, and back in 2022 it openly criticised the Liz Truss government’s plans, warning tax cuts would fuel inflation and inequality.

Taking such a candid approach with Trump invites risks. His administration is already weighing up whether to withdraw from global institutions, including the IMF and the World Bank.

The US is the largest shareholder in both, and its departure could be devastating for two organisations that have been pillars of the world economic order since the end of the Second World War.

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Here in the UK, Andrew Bailey has already raised concerns about the prospect of global fragmentation.

It is “very important that we don’t have a fragmentation of the world economy,” the Bank of England’s governor said.

“A big part of that is that we have support and engagement in the multilateral institutions, institutions like the IMF, the World Bank, that support the operation of the world economy. That’s really important.”

The Trump administration might take a different view when its review of intergovernmental organisations is complete.

That is the main tension running through this year’s spring meetings.

How much the IMF will say and how much we will have to read between the lines, remains to be seen.

It’s no great surprise that members of a Labour MPs’ LGBT+ WhatsApp group would be raising concerns about the impact of this week’s Supreme Court ruling on the trans community.

But the critical contributions reportedly made by some of the group’s higher-profile ministerial members highlight the underlying divisions with the Labour Party over the issue – and point to future tensions once the practical implications of the judgement become clear.

Messages leaked to the Mail on Sunday allegedly include the Home Office minister Dame Angela Eagle writing “the ruling is not as catastrophic at it seems but the EHRC [Equality and Human Rights Commission] guidance might be & there are already signs that some public bodies are overreacting”.

Culture minister Sir Chris Bryant reportedly replied he “agreed” with another MP’s opinion that the EHRC chair Baroness Falkner was “pretty appalling” when she said the ruling would mean trans women could not use single-sex female facilities or compete in women’s sports.

Government sources argue these messages are hardly evidence of any kind of plot or mass revolt against the Supreme Court’s ruling.

But they still raise uncomfortable questions for a party that has been on a tortuous journey over the issue.

Under Jeremy Corbyn, Labour was committed to introducing self-identification – enabling people to change their legal sex without a medical diagnosis – a position dropped in 2023.

Back in 2021, Sir Keir Stamer said the then Labour MP Rosie Duffield was “not right” to say “only women have a cervix”. But three years later he acknowledged that “biologically, she of course is right”.

Duffield, who now sits as an independent, is asking for an apology – but that doesn’t seem to be forthcoming from a government keen to minimise its own role in changing social attitudes to the issue.

The Conservative position on this has also chopped and changed – with Theresa May‘s support for gender self-ID ditched under Boris Johnson.

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As the Conservatives’ equalities minister, Kemi Badenoch led the UK government’s fight against Scotland’s efforts to make it easier to change gender – and she’s determined to punch Labour’s bruise on the issue.

This weekend, she’s written to the cabinet secretary calling for an investigation into a possible breach of the ministerial or civil service code over a statement made by the Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson in response to the ruling, which said “we have always supported the protection of single-sex spaces based on biological sex”.

The Tories claim this is false, because last summer Ms Phillipson herself gave an interview in which she suggested that trans women with penises could use female toilets.

Ms Phillipson has been approached for a response.

Her comments, however, are entirely in keeping with the government’s official statement on the judgement, which claims they have “always supported the protection of single-sex spaces based on biological sex” and welcomed the ruling as giving “clarity and confidence for women and service providers”.

The government statement added: “Single-sex spaces are protected in law and will always be protected by this government.”