And lower imported inflation thanks to globalisation should eventually lead to higher prices elsewhere, as disposable income increases and the levels of wages and other costs equalise across countries. So there is no reason why any of these structural changes should make our current price stability objectives unobtainable. They may create global disinflationary forces, but those forces are transitory in nature.
What can affect our objective, however, is if those forces have a persistent impact on inflation – which is to say, if they become embedded in inflation dynamics and inflation expectations. But that is not a structural issue; it is about the credibility of monetary policy in anchoring inflation expectations. This brings me to the second line of argument against active monetary policy.