I am concerned that this could affect the timing of the bottoming out of external demand through various channels including disruptions in financial markets and a reduction in firms' incentive to invest caused by developments in trade. Second is the effects of the consumption tax hike scheduled to take place in October 2019.
The planned increase in the tax rate is smaller than that at the time of the previous hike in April 2014, and the government plans to implement measures such as a reduced tax rate, a point reward program when using cashless payments, and more flexibly passing on the rise in the consumption tax to sales prices.