Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala | Credit: X/@WTO
World Trade Organisation (WTO) Director General, Prof Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, cautioned nations to keep calm over tariffs, warning that a tit-for-tat trade war would be “catastrophic” for the world economy.
Okonjo-Iweala made the appeal Thursday during a panel discussion on tariffs at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in a week that saw US President Donald Trump threaten tariffs against China, the European Union, Mexico and Canada.
The WTO director-general also called for cooler heads to prevail, stressing: “Please, let’s not hyperventilate. I know we are here to discuss tariffs. I’ve been saying to everybody: Could we chill, also. I just sense a lot of hyperventilation.”
Also read: International Women’s Day: How Okonjo-Iweala celebrated women at WTO
She recalled the fallout from the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act in the United States during the Great Depression in 1930, which prompted retaliation and worsened the global economic crisis at the time.
“We are very much saying to our members at the WTO: You have other avenues. Even if a tariff is levied, please keep calm, don’t wake up and without the necessary groundwork levy your own,” she said.
“If we have tit-for-tat retaliation, whether it’s 25 percent tariffs, 60 percent, and we go to where we were in the 1930s, we are going to see double-digit global GDP losses, double-digit. That’s catastrophic.”
.AFP
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