Benoît Cœuré: Interview with CNBC Interview with Mr Benoît Cœuré, Member of the Executive Board of the European Central Bank, and CNBC, conducted by Mr Steve Sedgwick on 6 April 2018. * * *  You've been talking about trade and that is the key topic here in Cernobbio and indeed globally at the moment as well. What's your contribution this morning on this topic? The point I was making this morning at the conference is that first we're not sure yet that we're in a trade war. As much as possible, if we could avoid the bellicose semantics and come back to a reasonable discussion, that would help for economic confidence. That also means that if this would morph into a full-fledged trade war, this has the potential to have quite damaging consequences for growth and jobs globally, including in the US. Is it already having ramifications in global financial markets? We've seen the volatility and equity markets. We've seen higher borrowing costs as well. It looks like it's already having the effects of a trade war without being a trade war yet. To some extent, yes, we've seen that. We've seen obviously stock prices going down, some risk premia are going up, so some tightening of financial conditions globally starting with the US. But it all depends on how the situation will evolve. Certainly what we don't want to see is a general tightening of financial conditions.
We still seem to be going through the same arguments, the same structural issues. In fact if anything a potential new government in Italy could scrap some of the reforms that the ECB so applauded. Certainly the advice we are giving to governments, insofar we can give advice to governments, because they are independent from us as much as we are independent from them. The only advice we can give is to use that environment of strong growth, of lower rates to build the buffers in the economy. That includes building fiscal buffers but that also includes doing structural reforms so that the economy can become stronger. Listening to some of the more recent speeches from Mr Draghi and hearing comments from yourself and others, I don't get the impression that the ECB feels that their opportunity has been taken. Am I wrong? There has been some disappointment on the fiscal side where we believe that governments generally could have made better use of the windfall of lower rates to reduce their deficits, to consolidate their finances in a more permanent way, in a more structural way. That's true. Now, when it comes to reforms in the real economy we've seen a lot going on. Look at how much Spain has reformed its labour market. That's now yielding very positive results in terms of job creation. Look at what France is doing, which really goes in the right direction, so reforms are being done. Are they being done in Italy?