There is lot of uncertainty; cash holdings are rising: Ronald O'Hanley, State Street

US tariff war, said Ronald O'Hanley, chairman and chief executive officer of State Street, one of the world's largest custodian banks and asset managers. In an interview with Nishanth Vasudevan during his visit to Mumbai last week, Boston-based O'Hanley spoke about the US economic outlook, China and India's instant equity trade settlement plans among various topics. Edited excerpts:

There seems to be a lot of uncertainty among investors around the tariff war ignited by the US. What is your reading?

The best word to describe the situation is the one you just used: uncertainty. Remember, it's less than 60 days into this administration. And a lot has been flooded into the marketplace. There's been a lot of executive orders. What we don't know yet is where the tariffs will settle out. To me, this is the beginning of a discussion and a negotiation and that's the way to think about it. But as a result, there is much uncertainty because I think market expectations were that maybe there wouldn't be as much discussion of tariffs or maybe the tariffs would be not as comprehensive as they're being implied. So you've got uncertainty amongst investors. The US trade is definitely risk-off at this point. But there's also growing uncertainty around consumers and businesses in the US. And the sooner there's clarity on what the direction is here — it's a little bit like what I was saying earlier about regulation. The thing that businesses hate more than anything is uncertainty.Faced with the bad road, the good road, or uncertainty