The Washington-based organisation said tariffs trigger tit-for-tat trade wars that impoverish the economies involved in the dispute and the wider global economy.
It said there had been a very sharp increase in the number of trade-distorting measures implemented by countries over the past five years, from 1,000 in 2019 to 3,000 today, and that a fresh round of tariffs would create further harm.
Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas, the IMF's chief economist, said: "There is definitely a direction of travel here that we are very concerned about, because a lot of these trade-distorting measures could reflect decisions by countries that are self-centred and could be ultimately harmful not only to the global economy ... but also hurtful for the countries who implement them as well."
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