The global
growth story is no longer new, but the broad-based economic recovery underway a
decade after the 2008 financial crisis still needs some propping up from fiscal
policy, according to the head of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and
Development (OECD).
About
three-quarters of OECD members are basing their fiscal policy on some kind of
stimulus, Secretary-General Jose
Gurria told CNBC's Joumanna Bercetche on Tuesday during the
organization's yearly forum in Paris. This means that policy is driving "a
good part" of the growth, he said.
On the
other hand, monetary policy remains historically loose in many OECD countries,
particularly across Europe and Japan.
"So
you're having a situation where this is not yet on its own," said the
secretary-general, a Mexican economist and diplomat who negotiated the North
American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1994. "This is not yet moving by
itself. It still needs some props, still needs some crutches. Policy
crutches."
"Perhaps
less obvious than before, but still it means that if you would move the
stimulus, perhaps this would flatten out and it means therefore that we just
have to insist on the structural policy side," he added.
Jose Angel
Gurria, secretary-general of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and
Development (OECD), gestures as he speaks during a Bloomberg Television
interview in London on Wednesday, April 4, 2018.
A
combination of low interest rates, public spending and tax cuts, particularly
in the U.S. for the latter, fall into the category of these fiscal
"crutches," Gurria said. The OECD in March projected global gross
domestic product (GDP) growth
to hit around 4 percent this year, after reaching 3.7 percent in 2017.
Four percent was the global rate of growth before the financial crisis hit.
The growth
has put pressure on governments to start unwinding their decade-long monetary
easing programs, slowly bringing interest rates back up to prevent an
overheating of the economy. Some fear that a tightening process too soon or too
quickly could threaten that long-awaited growth, while at the same time many
market analysts say higher rates are needed to bring policy back to normal and
create room to bring rates back down in the event of another recession.
Alongside a
brighter growth outlook is the onset of trade tensions, heralding unexpected
risk after President Donald Trump this spring launched a series of tariff
announcements on allies and competitors alike. But Gurria wasn't particularly
fazed by the threat of a trade war.
"We
see that there are trade tensions," he said. "And there has still not
been a single shot fired in the sense that it is a lot of talk, but no tariffs
actually imposed." World leaders are currently in negotiations in attempts
to avert the tariff impositions.
In March
and April, Trump proposed sweeping tariffs on steel and aluminum imports
worldwide, mostly in an effort to fight overcapacity in foreign (namely,
Chinese) steel production that pushed down prices and cut the competitiveness
of U.S. steel producers. China produces about half the world's steel, and
production in both China and the U.S., as well as in other major producers like
India and Japan, saw increases in March of this year.
For Gurria,
punishing the consequences of overcapacity rather than addressing the
overcapacity itself will get nations nowhere.
"I
believe very strongly that if we do not go to the substance of the problem,
which is overcapacity itself, rather than fighting only the consequences of
that, then we will not make enough progress," he said.
The OECD
has 35 member states, most of whose economies are considered high-income and
fully developed. Gurria, a longtime leader in developing national fiscal
policy, served as Mexico's secretary of finance in the late 1990s as well as
president and CEO of the National Development Bank of Mexico and the Foreign
Trade Bank. He was also on the external advisory group of the Inter-American
Development Bank, and was credited for numerous spending cuts that led to
Mexico's economic stabilization during his tenure as finance secretary. Gurria
has been at the OECD's helm since 2006.
Click
here for the original article form CNBC.