The Global Rate Debate

In the second part of our economic roundtable, Michael Gapen, Jens Eisenschmidt and Chetan Ahya join Seth Carpenter to discuss how central banks are balancing sticky inflation, resilient growth and regional policy trade-offs.

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Seth Carpenter: Welcome to Thoughts on the Market. I'm Seth Carpenter, Morgan Stanley's Global Chief Economist and Head of Macro Research.

And once again today, I am joined by Morgan Stanley's chief regional economists: Michael Gapen, the Chief U.S. Economist, Jens Eisenschmidt, our Chief Europe Economist, and on the other side of the world, Chetna Ahya, our Chief Asia Economist.

Yesterday, we talked about what's supporting growth around the world, especially AI spending in the U.S. and some government spending in Europe, and Asia's role in making all of this happen. Today, we're going to try to dig deeper and go into policy.

It's Tuesday, July 21st at 10 am in New York

Jens Eisenschmidt: And 4pm in Frankfurt.

Chetan Ahya: And 10pm in Hong Kong.

Seth Carpenter: Since the last time we did this in mid-April, I will say the debate around central banks has probably become more complicated. Global growth has held up, probably better than many people expected. And inflation, which picked up a lot, started to recede. But it has not gone away. And some of the forces helping to shape the economy, the AI spending, government spending, that possible upswing in manufacturing, that could keep demand strong, and it might keep pushing inflation higher.

So, the question today is, if growth remains resilient, how much room really do central banks have to navigate?

Mike, let me start with you because your call for the Fed here in the U.S. is out of consensus, or at least at odds with where the market is pricing things. We talked about the demand going from AI. You pointed out that imports are actually limiting how much domestic demand there is.

So, what is the underlying story for inflation in the U.S.? And what does it mean for the Fed?

Michael Gapen: So, our view is that inflation will come down in the U.S. So, we think disinflation will be driven by some payback in energy prices. Some payback from tariffs, which have pushed up goods prices over the last year. And some further diminishment in housing-related inflation, namely shelter.

So, we think on a broad-based perspective, inflation has already peaked and will start moving lower. And we think we've seen evidence of this in recent inflation prints.

A risk to that, though, is from the demand side of the economy and AI-related inflation in two parts. One, higher software prices, chipflation. So, the pass-through of some of the AI pricing components. Fortunately, here, they're about less than 1 percent of the consumer basket. So, we don't think that there's a great risk, a strong risk, a high risk of AI-related inflation in the consumer bundle.

I think the real risk is that maybe we underestimate broad-based demand, animal spirits. And so, you might just see a broad-based increase in inflation from stronger demand. That'll be a little bit harder to see in real times. But our expectation is that inflation moves lower to about 3 percent, by the end of this year and closer to 2.5 percent next year.

Seth Carpenter: All right. Thanks, Mike. And in fact, the most recent inflation report that we just got confirms your perspective that inflation should be coming down. And so, I guess the question then remains: What would it take for the Fed to hike this year if inflation has come down like we've seen?

Michael Gapen: Well, I think that the answer there is that inflation wouldn't come down in line with our expectations. So, if the view is that energy prices, tariffs, and shelter inflation should provide plenty of offset and bring inflation down, I think the answer is you don't get payback.

Explicitly, core goods prices stay elevated. Maybe we get ongoing disruptions in the Middle East that push energy prices higher and create second-round effects. So, I think inflation just lingering at elevated levels could mean the Fed gets brought in to raise rates in September or later this year.

We think if they're patient enough, they'll see enough disinflation to keep them on the sidelines. But the risk is disinflation forecast is too optimistic, inflation stays firm, the Fed needs to raise rates.

Seth Carpenter: All right, Jens, what about for you and the ECB? They've already raised interest rates once this year. I think you've got a forecast for them raising interest rates again in September. What could make you wrong about that forecast? What's going to make you convinced that you're right about that forecast? And is there a similar tension that the ECB is wrestling with that Mike talked about for the Fed?

Jens Eisenschmidt: Yeah. I mean, starting with the last part of your question, I think no doubt, very similar tension. Just that, of course, it's less obvious. It's essentially a nuanced European version instead of the loud American version that we always stereotypically think the world looks like.

So, essentially, we have here clearly not an AI boom. That, I mean, there's no question. And we have discussed that yesterday. Still, there is certainly the notion that the world demand is not really weak, and some of this will also arrive in Europe. And so, you have that tension between maybe there's more resilience than we had thought, and so inflation will not come down through to slack as much. And so, we might actually add something here in terms of monetary restrictiveness.

Now, the other thing that is often forgotten, even though it's blatantly obvious, the starting point is just different. The ECB is running neutral monetary policy by all accounts. I mean, you could say 2 percent is neutral, and now they are 2.25. But, you know, there are ranges of uncertainty around any estimate. And the latest that they published runs – goes from 1.75 to 2;2.5.

So basically, even if they were to increase rates to 2.5 in September, you could go with the microphone around the governing council, and you would probably find a lot of people saying, "Well, this is still a neutral policy." That's probably not the case for the U.S. So, I guess this matters here for that debate too.

Seth Carpenter: All right. Yesterday we talked about lots of different things, but for Europe, we brought up fiscal policy. How do you think about fiscal policy and how it affects monetary policy? And so, I'm thinking about two channels.

One, how much does the ECB care that if they keep pushing up interest rates, they're going to increase the debt service burden for countries that are already facing high debt costs?

And second, is fiscal policy going to be the extra impetus for inflation that forces even more rate hikes from the ECB?

Jens Eisenschmidt: I guess it depends on who you ask. Certainly, more concerned members in the governing council that would point to exactly that fiscal stimulus as a reason why interest rates have to be increased further from here.

The other answer I would give is – probably for now at least, the view on fiscal policy is really model-based. You look at what type of increase in interest rate gets you essentially more fiscal restraint because there's an increase in interest rate bill and so less spending somewhere else. And that gets you basically less stimulus or less growth, I mean, very roughly speaking.

I don't think it's a major concern for now. We haven't reached yet interest rates where this would start to play a role. I guess, again, Europe being fragmented as it is, with all the political risk that's around the corner. Think about the elections in France and Italy and Spain next year. That will very likely find itself expressed in spreads. And so, the higher the interest rates are, the larger the spreads could become.

Seth Carpenter: So, for each of you, there's clearly a role for inflation. One of the risks we'll talk about maybe is inflation expectations and how maybe there's a big shift in what's going on with inflation.

But Chetan, that brings me to you and Asia, because one economy where there unquestionably has been a fundamental shift in inflation and inflation expectation over the past several years is Japan.

The Bank of Japan is on this normalization path where they're raising interest rates. Interest rates had been negative and then zero, and now they're gradually raising things up. Inflation has come back to Japan. Markets are looking at what the Bank of Japan is likely to do. Can you tell us a little bit about what our view is for the Bank of Japan this year and next? And what might make them hike interest rates faster than we think?

And is there any risk that in fact they hike interest rates slower than we think?

Chetan Ahya: Yeah, Seth. So, we are expecting BoJ to hike twice from here. The first rate hike is coming up in December of this year, and then another one coming up in June of next year. And then we think that, you know, the underlying inflation trend in Japan is not really that strong.

So, while market pricing is for about three more rate hikes instead of two that we are building in our base case. And some of the macro investors are even talking about four more rate hikes. We think the underlying inflation trend warrants a caution and BoJ to go slowly than what the market is pricing in and what the macro investors are saying in.

And the key part of our framework on thinking about Japan's inflation is that bulk of the explanation to inflation rise in Japan lies in currency moves. And secondarily, you can look at also the other drivers are more from supply side, which is higher energy prices or food prices. Whereas it's not driven so much by demand.

To elaborate further on why it is not driven by demand, when you look at Japan's consumption trend, and if you index it to hundred at pre-COVID levels in September [20]19 then it's currently about 101; i.e., that it's just about 1 percent up over the last seven years.

So that's a very tepid trend of consumption demand. And therefore, we don't think that BoJ needs to rush into hike in a more aggressive pace going forward.

Seth Carpenter: So, there is this fundamental shift, but boy, it's not on a tear, and so the BoJ can take its time. You know, Chetan, it's hard to wrap up a conversation about the global economy without talking about China.

I get the sense that there's not a lot going on with monetary policy, but we did just see a soft Q2 GDP print. So, against that backdrop, what should we be expecting in terms of policy? Is there any monetary policy coming? Or is there going to be some fiscal expansion? Or is China just sort of stuck in this lower gear?

Chetan Ahya: Yeah, Seth. So, we were also surprised by the soft GDP print. But when you look into the data, actually, it was interestingly doing well on exports.

And I mentioned earlier about how the global CapEx trend is helping Asia. It's definitely helping China too. But at the same time, China's domestic demand turned out to be quite weak. And particularly in the areas where we think that the policy response can be providing some help, i.e., infrastructure spend, was also very weak.

And therefore, we are expecting that in the back half of the year, you will see the government taking up some fiscal expansion. Not new stimulus announcement, but whatever they had budgeted. They have enough room within that to utilize that budget and actually increase that fiscal spending towards infrastructure.

We have about 2 trillion RMB worth of funds available for the government to go ahead and spend in the second half. And then lift that growth trend, which has dipped to 4.3 percent in second quarter to back to 4.6 percent in the back half of the year.

Seth Carpenter: You know what? Maybe that's a great place for us to leave it. We've gone around the world again today, but this time focusing much more on policy.

In the U.S., the Fed is facing this interesting situation. We think inflation is coming down. The last CPI print went in our favor. And so as a result, our forecast is that the Fed doesn't change policy at all this year. But it's going to come down to the data, and in particular, whether or not Mike and his team are right in terms of where inflation is going.

In Europe, the ECB has already raised interest rates once this year. Jens and team are looking for another interest rate hike. The ECB really does seem more sensitive to inflation coming from the energy shock, but there are lots of other crosscurrents that they're paying attention to as well.

And then the other major developed market central bank, the Bank of Japan, is on this normalization path. They are in the process of raising interest rates, but Chetan pointed out to us that the growth rate is such that they don't have to be in any sort of hurry, and they can take their time.

So, with that, Mike, Jens, Chetan, thank you so much for helping us connect all of these dots. And to the listeners, thank you for listening.

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