Sawt Falasteen - Italy complains about strong euro, urges ECB to cut rates

"An increasingly weak dollar and an increasingly strong euro are putting our exporters in difficulty, in addition to the tariffs" imposed by the United States, Antonio Tajani told reporters after talks with the EU's trade commissioner.

"So I hope the European Central Bank will also begin to consider, as they are doing at the US Central Bank, a further reduction in interest rates, but also a new quantitative easing to allow for more liquidity and reduce the strength of the euro," he said.

Tajani said that otherwise, "we risk the cost of the difference between the dollar and the euro being even more burdensome than the tariffs".

Italy is the third-largest EU exporter of goods to the United States.

The ECB, the central bank for the 20 countries that use the euro shared currency, on Thursday kept interest rates steady at two percent.

Inflation has settled around the central bank's two-percent target while ECB President Christine Lagarde noted that "downside risks" to eurozone growth had eased.

P.Tamimi--SF-PST