Erste Bank expects US tariffs to cut Romania's GDP by 0.3%

Austria's Erste Bank group has reduced the economic growth forecast for Romania and the countries of Central and Eastern Europe following the tariffs announced by US president Donald Trump.

Taking into consideration the impact of the tariffs, Erste sees Romania's economic growth at 1.8% this year and 3.1% in 2026 (-0.3 percentage points from the previous forecast).

Erste has developed two working scenarios. In the baseline scenario, tariffs would fall from 20% to 10% in the second half of this year. In the adverse scenario, tariffs would remain at 20% permanently.

"Our initial growth expectations for CEE were between 2% and 3.8% in 2025 and between 1.9% and 4.3% in 2026. The revision of forecasts for 2025 is rather marginal, up to 0.3 percentage points depending on the country. The negative impact in 2026 is slightly bigger. However, in 2026, the final magnitude will depend on the durability of the current tariff rate (baseline scenario of tariffs reduction to 10% in 2H25 vs. adverse scenario of a 20% rate permanently set)," the report reads.

In the baseline scenario, the cumulative negative impact of tariffs across the region remains between -0.3 percentage points and -0.2 percentage points. The impact on Romania's GDP would be around 0.15 percentage points.

In the adverse scenario, cumulative direct negative impact (at -0.8 percentage points) is the highest in Slovakia and Hungary. On the other hand, Croatia and Romania are likely to be least affected directly by global US import tariffs. The cumulative impact on Romania's GDP would be under 0.4 percentage points.

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