Welcome to Hard Talk from the BBC World Service with me, Stephen Sacker.

My guest in this interview recorded in Frankfurt on the 12th of March

has been a fixture in lists of the world's most powerful women for two decades.

Christine Lagarde rose to prominence as a successful corporate lawyer.

She became a highly regarded minister in France's

centre-right government after 2005 and was very quickly installed as finance minister. Some saw her

as a future French president. Instead, she moved to Washington as managing director of the

International Monetary Fund. In the middle of her second term at the fund, she quit in order to return to Europe

and become the first woman to head the European Central Bank.

So now she is a key player in management of the European economy,

at a time when the continent is facing severe economic headwinds.

Not only is there a long-term problem with low growth, low productivity, which has left Europe

struggling to compete with the US and China, but now there are huge new political challenges too.

Donald Trump has fired the opening shots in what could be an

extremely damaging global trade war. And Trump's determination to see Europe's democracies

pay for their own defense, rather than rely on American largesse, has got governments

across Europe anxiously trying to figure out how they can rebuild their militaries

without ruining the public finances. Europe desperately needs massive investment in technology

and infrastructure to make it globally competitive, has that just got a whole lot harder. Well, Christine Lagarde joins me now. Welcome to Hard Talk.

Lovely to see you again. It's great to have you on the show. I have to begin in the United States,

which is weeks into Trump's second term. As you look at what he is doing, particularly in terms of his

economic measures right now,

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