Ukraine Crisis to Hurt US Growth and Raise Inflation

The Conference Board is downgrading its 2022 and 2023 US GDP forecast to 3.0% and 2.3% y/y due to expected fallout from the Ukraine Crisis. Simultaneously, we are raising our expectations for inflation in 2022 and 2023, primarily due to rising commodity prices. Given high levels of uncertainty, we have developed three distinct scenarios that combine five shocks resulting from the crisis. The economic harm associated with COVID-19 continues to ebb, but threats resulting from emerging variants of the virus should not be ignored.