The uncertainty about commercial tariffs is complex, but a period of uncertainty also gives Europe the opportunity to affirm itself as an economic and geopolitical superpower, said the governor of the Bank of Latvia to CNBC on Thursday.
“With all this uncertainty and vulnerability, this is also the moment of opportunities for Europe,” Mārtiņņš Kazāks said, who is also a member of the Governing Council of the European Central Bank.
“It is a time for Europe to understand all the aspects of being an economic superpower and become a very political and geopolitical political and geopolitical superpower, and this requires making all the decisions that in the past were crisis, globally Saffy. The head of the Central Bank cited a union of capital markets, a prosecutor and a single market in services as examples of additional integration that were needed.
“This requires political will, political gills to make those decisions and strengthen the European economy and affirm its place in a global world,” Kazāks told Carolin Roth of CNB out of the spring meetings of the IMF world in Washington.
When asked what tariffs mean for the ECB, which implemented an interest rate of 25 points at their April meeting, Kazāks said the decisions would be tasks “to meet to the meeting because or this bad visibility.”
“Uncertainty is very difficult,” he said, adding that “it is certainly a very vulnerable situation for the global economy.”
“He [political] The statements, political decisions and the political environment and especially tariff war are what is creating this extremely high uncertainty. “
Kazāks said financial markets must be very careful for any dramatic change in feeling.
“Until now it seems to be relatively ordered … but if one looks at the indirect effects of Europe, financial markets are working more or less well, we saw that differentials explode or something like that,” he said.
“However, in terms of macro scenarios, this uncertainty is extremely high in the sense that, given the possible results, the multiple scenarios and their probabilities are very similar to the baseline [tariff] Scenario, “he said.
Althegh, the initial duties announced at the beginning of April by the president of the United States, Donald Trump, as well as the countermeasures of the EU retaliation, were a pause for 90 days until July, there are concerns about the WIST in regional and global.
The IMF earlier this week predicted that the Gross Domestic Product of the USA would expand 1.8% in 2025, less 0.9 percentage points of its January forecast. The fund also reduced its global growth forecast to 2.8% this year, less 0.5 percentage points of its previous estimate.
The fund predicted a slight decrease in the euro zone, predicting that the GDP of the euro area will reach 0.8% in 2025, before collecting fashion at 1.2% in 2026.
Kazāks said the IMF forecasts were on the optimistic side and that the risk of global recession “was not trivial.”