In this speech, Swati takes stock of the evidence from key episodes of global disruption over the last decade, and considers what this tells us about prospects for trade in the current environment. She concludes by reflecting on challenges for monetary policy in an unstable world.
Swati Dhingra
Member of the Monetary Policy Committee
Speech
Thank you for the invitation to speak at the Central Bank of Ireland.
It feels like a momentous time to be discussing global trade policy, taking as it has a more overtly combative turn in recent months. It will come as no great revelation to anyone at this conference that estimated effective tariff rate for the US has reached its highest level since the infamous Smoot-Hawley Tarriff Act of 1930 (Chart 1). It’s understandable that the world’s policymakers feel some mixture of bemusement and alarm at their countries all being tariffed with the same brush by the US Administration. However, we ought to take this moment to acknowledge that this comes amid a wider fracturing of the consensus around globalisation and trade in much of the world (Colantone et al., 2022).
