Uncertainty persists despite EU-US trade deal: Lagarde
AFP | Berlin
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The US -EU trade deal has eased but “certainly not eliminated” global uncertainty, European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde said yesterday.
Speaking at a panel at the World Economic Forum in Geneva, Lagarde said the deal had left the effective US tariff rate for EU goods at between 12 and 16 percent.
The tariff rate was “somewhat higher” than the ECB had forecast, she said, adding that President Donald Trump’s plans for sector-specific levies on pharmaceutical goods and semiconductors remain unclear.
The ECB expects eurozone activity to slow in the third quarter of 2025 after a strong start to the year.
Lagarde said that “global growth has remained broadly steady so far” but cautioned that “this resilience has been mainly driven by tariff-induced distortions of economic activity”.
She noted that, in the first quarter of the year, “importers boosted their inventories in anticipation of higher tariffs”.
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