At the same time, large-scale investments in renewable energies could prove disruptive, at least temporarily, by increasing government borrowing and demand for raw materials, thereby heightening inflation. Much of the world’s population is aging, and. Those trends could act as supply shocks, similar to the shortages of goods and labor that accelerated inflation during the rebound from the pandemic recession.
“We are living in this world in which we could expect to have more and maybe bigger supply shocks,” Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas, chief economist at the International Monetary Fund, said in an interview. “All of these things tend to make it harder to produce stuff and make it more costly. And that is definitely the configuration that central banks dislike the most.”
Despite all the changes, U.S. imports reached an all-time high in 2022, suggesting that overall trade has remained high. Yet Alfaro cautioned that these changes bring downsides as well: In the past five years, the cost of goods from Vietnam has increased about 10% and from Mexico about 3%, adding to inflationary pressures.
Kazuo Ueda, governor of the Bank of Japan, said during a discussion Saturday that while China’s sputtering growth is “disappointing,” it stems mainly from rising defaults in its bloated property sector, rather than changes to trade patterns.