It didn’t take long for Michele Bullock’s press conference on Tuesday to shift to the topic on the mind of everyone in the global economy ahead of US President Donald Trump’s ‘Liberation Day’ later this week.
“At the moment we’re not seeing signs that we’re impacted by this,” the Reserve Bank governor said in reply to the second question of the presser, following an uneventful decision to keep interest rates on hold at 4.1%.
The public has come to expect soothing words from Bullock. But under further questioning, even she couldn’t escape the blunt reality — that we are heading into a period that is unlikely to be Australia’s best economic chapter as the US under Trump seeks to impose widespread tariffs on the rest of the world.
“It’s not good for us, a world trading system that is fragmenting,” she said. “The issue of [the] longer-run, the sorts of impacts this has, is going to be quite dramatic. And that … just will not be good for the world economy as a whole”.
