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ECB's Knot on US tariffs: a trade war only has losers
Published by Global Banking and Finance Review
Posted on February 2, 2025
2 min readLast updated: January 26, 2026
Global Banking and Finance Review
Company
Published by Global Banking and Finance Review
Posted on February 2, 2025
2 min readLast updated: January 26, 2026
ECB's Klaas Knot warns US tariffs will lead to inflation and interest rate hikes, impacting the euro. Europe may retaliate due to political reasons.
AMSTERDAM - Klaas Knot, a member of the European Central Bank's governing council, said on Sunday that he expects new tariffs imposed by U.S. President Donald Trump will lead to higher inflation and interest rates in the United States that will likely weaken the euro.
Knot, who is also the Netherlands' Central Bank President, said in an interview on Dutch television program Buitenhof that trade wars harm all sides, and the best reaction to tariffs in economic terms is to do nothing - but that he expect countries will retaliate out of political considerations.
"Europe will not want to be pushed around. We are also a powerful trade bloc with 400 million consumers," he said.
Trump announced tariffs on U.S. allies Canada and Mexico, and on China, on Saturday.
Knot said it was inevitable that U.S. prices will rise due to such tariffs, leading to higher prices for U.S. consumers, and higher interest rates to control the resulting inflation.
"We’re already seeing that reflected in long-term interest rates," he said. "Some of that will spill over into Europe."
Knot said he had endorsed the ECB's rate cut earlier this week and he believes inflation in Europe is headed back toward the central bank's 2% target.
(Reporting by Toby Sterling;Editing by Elaine Hardcastle)
Klaas Knot stated that new tariffs imposed by the U.S. will lead to higher inflation and that trade wars harm all sides.
Knot mentioned that U.S. prices will rise due to tariffs, leading to higher prices for consumers and potentially higher interest rates to control inflation.
He emphasized that Europe, as a powerful trade bloc with 400 million consumers, will not want to be pushed around by U.S. tariffs.
Knot indicated that the tariffs are already reflected in long-term interest rates, which may also spill over into Europe.
Knot believes that inflation in Europe is headed back toward the European Central Bank's target of 2%.
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