ECB’s Knot: Medium-Term Inflation Impact of Tariffs Ambiguous

13 May 2025

ECB’s Knot: Medium-Term Inflation Impact of Tariffs Ambiguous
Klaas Knot, governor of De Nederlandsche Bank, at the European Central Bank Forum on Central Banking in Sintra, Portugal on July 3, 2024. Photo by the ECB under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

By David Barwick – FRANKFURT (Econostream) – European Central Bank Governing Council member Klaas Knot on Tuesday reiterated his view that trade tensions’ medium-term impact on euro area inflation was unclear.

Speaking in Amsterdam, Knot, who heads De Nederlandsche Bank, said that high uncertainty due to US trade measures was ‘an absolute negative for economic growth in the short run — it’s probably also a negative for inflation.’

‘But the medium-term inflation impact is a little bit more ambiguous, and that’s something that we have to find out and that we have to closely monitor’, he continued.