Of the 29 categories of goods for which the ABS publishes import prices, 26 fell in SDR terms between 1996 and the present. Nearly all of them are categories of manufactured goods. Whether the trend in the price of a particular category of internationally-traded goods is up or down depends to a large extent on long-run supply elasticities.
In my remarks today, I would therefore like to review the economic situation in the euro area, touching on what we know so far about the impact of the war. And I would like to lay out how national and European policies can combine to help mitigate its costs and manage today’s uncertainty.