Stagflation-lite could still make policymakers sweat

Policymakers around the world may not like the word 'stagflation,' but they're going to hear a lot more it this year if the import tariffs U.S. President Donald Trump is threatening open up a global trade war. "I don't use the word stagflation," Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey said earlier this month. "It really doesn't have a particularly, frankly, precise meaning." He is correct about the ambiguity. Stagflation was first coined to describe the painful mix of sustained economic stagnation and industrial-scale inflation that scarred Western economies in the 1970s. But it is now used to characterize almost any…