Stars and strife
The impacts of Donald Trump's trade agenda dominated the first day of Macquarie's Australia conference, while Labor's election win barely rated a mention.
The Australian people may have just handed Anthony Albanese a resounding mandate but the country's corporates remain overwhelmingly focused on Donald Trump.
On day one of the Macquarie Australia Conference, which was opened by chief executive Shemara Wikramanayake in Sydney on Tuesday, it was telling that Albo — hot off one of the most extraordinary Australian election victories in decades — barely rated a mention, while the US president, and his policies, cast a long shadow.
Take billionaire Richard White, who in a rare public appearance took the opportunity to downplay the impact of Trump’s tariffs on his trade-exposed logistics software company WiseTech. “The art of the deal is the way you smash up your people and then give them something good. That’s noise,” he said. “While tariffs is something we have to hear about, it truly isn’t signal, it’s truly noise.”
Blood plasma giant CSL’s CFO Joy Linton was more downbeat, saying the $120 billion company was hopeful its products would be exempt from tariffs but that the White House had created deep uncertainty.
