*  *  *  It is a great pleasure to be addressing this community of distinguished journalists at the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan. Today, I first wish to share with you how I see the current state of the Japanese economy and the outlook. And then I will touch on the implications of both for the future course of monetary policy.
If the shift to “inward-looking policies” gains traction, this can potentially further shrink global trade, which could lead to even lower global growth. In economics, this is a classic case of the Prisoner’s Dilemma, wherein because of the absence of cooperation, the simultaneous actions of economic agents lead to sub-optimal outcomes.