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.
Intel Corp chief executive officer Lip-Bu Tan (陳立武) is expected to meet with Taiwanese suppliers next month in conjunction with the opening of the Computex Taipei trade show, supply chain sources said on Monday. The visit, the first for Tan to Taiwan since assuming his new post last month, would be aimed at enhancing Intel’s ties with suppliers in Taiwan as he attempts to help turn around the struggling US chipmaker, the sources said. Tan is to hold a banquet to celebrate Intel’s 40-year presence in Taiwan before Computex opens on May 20 and invite dozens of Taiwanese suppliers to exchange views
Application-specific integrated circuit designer Faraday Technology Corp (智原) yesterday said that although revenue this quarter would decline 30 percent from last quarter, it retained its full-year forecast of revenue growth of 100 percent. The company attributed the quarterly drop to a slowdown in customers’ production of chips using Faraday’s advanced packaging technology. The company is still confident about its revenue growth this year, given its strong “design-win” — or the projects it won to help customers design their chips, Faraday president Steve Wang (王國雍) told an online earnings conference. “The design-win this year is better than we expected. We believe we will win
Chizuko Kimura has become the first female sushi chef in the world to win a Michelin star, fulfilling a promise she made to her dying husband to continue his legacy. The 54-year-old Japanese chef regained the Michelin star her late husband, Shunei Kimura, won three years ago for their Sushi Shunei restaurant in Paris. For Shunei Kimura, the star was a dream come true. However, the joy was short-lived. He died from cancer just three months later in June 2022. He was 65. The following year, the restaurant in the heart of Montmartre lost its star rating. Chizuko Kimura insisted that the new star is still down
While China’s leaders use their economic and political might to fight US President Donald Trump’s trade war “to the end,” its army of social media soldiers are embarking on a more humorous campaign online. Trump’s tariff blitz has seen Washington and Beijing impose eye-watering duties on imports from the other, fanning a standoff between the economic superpowers that has sparked global recession fears and sent markets into a tailspin. Trump says his policy is a response to years of being “ripped off” by other countries and aims to bring manufacturing to the US, forcing companies to employ US workers. However, China’s online warriors
RSS