Australian Treasurer Jim Chalmers yesterday said the impact of the new US administration’s policies would have a “seismic” impact on the global economy, ahead of his fourth national budget due to be handed down tomorrow.
Chalmers said he is expecting a small boost to revenue in the upcoming fiscal blueprint, but the global economic chaos sparked by the return of US President Donald Trump to the White House has “cast a shadow over this budget.”
“This is a whole new world of uncertainty that we’re dealing with here. The changes out of the US are not surprising, but they are seismic,” he said in an interview with Bloomberg in Canberra.
Photo: Bloomberg
“We’ve got conflicts in the Middle East and Europe. We’ve got political uncertainty and division around the world. The budget is designed not just to respond to all of that uncertainty, but to make ourselves more resilient in the face of those external shocks,” he said.
Australia is due to hold elections by May 17 at the latest, with Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese expected to start the campaign within weeks. His center-left Labor government is neck-and-neck with the opposition in opinion polling, but there has been some minor improvement over the past few months as the vote approaches.
Albanese has struggled to address voters’ concerns over a national surge in the cost of living, including a housing crisis and a rate hike campaign by the Reserve Bank of Australia to curb inflation.
However, with the central bank cutting interest rates for the first time in four years last month, Chalmers said the national economy is “turning a corner” despite the global pressures.
“We’ve got inflation down, real wages are up, and incomes are strengthening. Unemployment is very low by historical standards. We’ve got the debt down, interest rates have started to come down, and now growth is rebounding solidly in our economy as well, led by the private sector,” he said.
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