tide of cooperation, including on trade, has shown signs of turning – what mark carney recently called a “ sea change ”. 24 after a prolonged period of peace, trade wars are now being waged : tariffs have been introduced on over $ 200 billion of bilateral goods trade between the us and china ; further us - china tariffs are threatened ; and there are ongoing trade tensions between the us and mexico and the us and europe. these developments are reverberating around global financial markets and among companies. among global investors, trade wars have risen to the top of their worry lists. negative trade news has weighed on global equity and corporate bond prices and government bond yields, as investors have sought safety. chart 26 shows the responsiveness of a selection of global asset prices to ( positive and negative ) trade news. asset prices have been particularly responsive to trade news during 2019. carney ( 2019 ). all speeches are available online at www. bankofengland. co. uk / speeches chart 26 : asset price responsiveness to trade news per cent 2018 - positive news 2019 - positive news 2018 - negative news 2019 - negative news 0. 2 2018 - positive news 2019 - positive news 2018 - negative news 2019 - negative news per cent, pp for vix 1. 2 0. 8 0. 1 0. 6 0. 4 0. 2 - 0. 1 - 0. 2 - 0. 2 - 0. 4 - 0. 3 - 0. 4 us dollar eri 2018 - positive news 2019 - positive news 2018 - negative news 2019 - negative news cny bps - 0. 6 - 0. 8 s & p 500 shanghai composite vix - 2 - 4 - 6 - 8 10 - year us treasury yields high - yield us corporate credit spreads sources : bloomberg lp and bank of england calculations. trade tensions are also taking their toll on companies ’ sentiment and activity. global goods trade has slowed ( chart 27 ). but the weakening has been even more striking in business surveys of sentiment, manufacturing and export orders. this weakening has been broadly - based across the world ’ s major trading economies, with simultaneous falls in sentiment across the united states, asia, europe and china. all speeches are available online at www. bankofengland. co. uk / speeches chart 27 : global activity indicators index, 50 = no change percentage change, 3 months on 3 months ago global manufacturing new orders pmi ( lhs ) global services pmi ( lhs ) cpb world

level, such as in firm - level data. moreover, there could be large non - linearities related to the nature of the global financial crisis that cannot be captured by the simple regression framework used above. so there is clearly still lots of work to do, and i hope to see more research dedicated to this subject in the future. intangibles and productivity i can now come full circle and consider the implications of the findings so far for another important equilibrium concept : potential output. as intangibles seem to be important for the puzzling weakness of investment, can they also help us rationalise recent developments in productivity and hence the implications for potential output? since the global financial crisis we have observed a substantial productivity puzzle. average labour productivity growth in the united kingdom has been around 1. 3 percentage points lower since the crisis. while intangibles help to explain the missing investment puzzle, their effect on productivity is mixed as, if anything, there is evidence that they might be driving this productivity slowdown. chart 9 shows that intangible - intensive industries have experienced the strongest slowdowns in labour productivity growth since the global financial crisis, consistent with a recent study by my colleague jonathan haskel. chart 9 : productivity slowdown is stronger in intangible - intensive industries note : the y - axis shows the change in average labour productivity growth over 2008 - 2018 with respect to the 2000 - 2007 period. the x - axis covers the average share of intangible assets in total capital. each ‘ bubble ’ represents an industry, with the area of the bubbles reflecting its share in total employment within each country, thereby measuring the industry ’ s contribution to aggregate labour productivity growth. eu4 consists of germany, spain, france and italy. source : source. ons, klems and authors'calculations, see appendix a. 1 to bailey et al. ( 2022 ) for more details. unfortunately, there does not seem to be a consensus yet on what exactly lies behind this observed relationship. a growing literature shows that there are barriers to intangible investment, for example because intangible assets cannot be easily used as collateral. [ 24 ] thus, the tightening of financial conditions following the global financial crisis could have disproportionally hindered the development of intangible - intensive industries, with potentially long - term consequences for productivity growth. [ 25 ] however, intangible investment has recovered in recent years, while productivity growth has remained weak. could