Bank of England’s Bailey: The UK must preserve free trade

• Urges UK not to counter protectionism with tariffs
• We must welcome opportunity to rebuild EU relations
• UK potential growth fell from 2.6% (1990-2008) to 1.3% (2009-2019), further dropping to 0.7% (2020-2023)
• Main culprit: Weak productivity growth
• UK consistently at bottom of G7 investment/GDP ratio since late 1990s
• Labor supply issues compounded by aging population
• Brexit has weighed on potential supply, particularly in goods trade
• AI offers hope but won’t be immediate “magic solution”

There isn’t much on monetary policy here but he certainly isn’t making the case to invest in the UK. The only part that even touched on monetary policy was:

“Our decisions on monetary policy require us to assess the consequences for inflation of the pressure at the time on domestic economic resources. That pressure reflects the balance between demand and supply in goods and services, and in the labour market. We cannot just look at actual output and employment and their growth. We have to compare the actuals with a measure of potential supply, the productive potential of the economy. This way we can assess the utilisation of resources.”

This article was written by Adam Button at www.forexlive.com.