The Director-General of the World Trade Organization (WTO), Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, has cautioned nations against escalating tariff conflicts, warning that a tit-for-tat trade war would be catastrophic for the world economy.
Naija News reports that Okonjo warned during a panel discussion on tariffs at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, after the US President, Donald Trump, threatened tariffs against China, the European Union, Mexico and Canada.
While recalling the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act fallout in the United States during the Great Depression in 1930, which prompted retaliation and worsened the global economic crisis, Okonjo urged cooler heads to prevail on the proposed tariff.
She said, “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.
“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.
“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.”
The post ‘Tit-For-Tat Tariffs Would Be Catastrophic’ – Okonjo-Iweala Warns appeared first on Naija News.
