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John Fraser loves a bomb of truth, and he delivered a ripper this week.
Although this did not fit with the government's strategy of avoiding open conflict with Donald Trump, the outgoing secretary of the Australian Treasury last time, she criticized the president's deepening war.
Fraser – whose delivery looks like that of a friendly, slightly smoky, but slightly patrician uncle – said that no economist worthy of the name could stand there and look at what was going on. "I think it's terrible, it's not in our interest, and we can only hope that common sense will prevail," Fraser told a rally. economists in Canberra this week
. Even though the US economy "is going extremely well," according to Fraser, the escalation of Trump's trade war means that Americans will "pay a price for protectionist policies."
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And so are we. The question is when.
The answer is important in the context of the next federal election, to be held before May of next year. It can still become a battle between Malcolm Turnbull and Bill Shorten over who is best positioned to lead the nation through the next big global collapse.
Trump's Commercial War – Making Completely All the Normalization of the Central Bank to Investment Decisions The South Korean government on Thursday issued a warning that the escalation of the trade dispute between the United States and the United States United and China would threaten to have an impact on his own country.
Economics – which is so strongly integrated into global value chains that its export performance is often a real-time indicator of the health of the global economy.
The trade crisis comes after the country's exports fell by 0.1% last month. one year earlier. Watch for further declines in South Korean export figures.
Another practical indicator of how the trade war is starting to affect the real world – the FedEx Corp. stock price. – has fallen sharply in recent weeks. After the first showers of February and the announcement of tariffs on the 34 billion US dollars of Chinese exports to the United States, Trump has already announced plans for an additional $ 200 billion. This covers about 6000 goods, covering half the value of what China ships to the United States in value.
Australia is far from immune to these developments, which have all the potential to turn into ice-nine every molecule of water on its way.
Much of the actual damage can already be done, even before Trump comes to the next stage of his threatened tariffs, which, by one estimate, could eventually reach US $ 800 billion in property affected. if China responds fully.
Faced with this kind of disruption, what manufacturer can afford to continue to manufacture goods without knowing if it will soon be affected? How are investment decisions made in this kind of environment?
That's why John Fraser's intervention is so timely, even if it's a little embarrbading for a government pursuing a small target strategy on Trump – exposed business advocacy groups Ever since the Fraser said three years ago that the Sydney real estate market was "unequivocal" in a price bubble – prompting high-level hearings from the Coalition about how they wanted to see the world go. He may be Yet, Fraser knows what he's talking about.
In the 1970s, when he made his teeth in the treasury as a senior official, the battle between the Canberra bureaucrats was notoriously hard-fought. He produced what Fraser remembered this week as an "impious alliance" between the Treasury and the Foreign Ministry, which was fighting against the deep protectionist instincts of the National Party-controlled Commerce Department.
With the help of intellectuals like Max Corden, the argument in favor of dismantling Australia's tariff wars was finally won. Trade was absorbed by Foreign Affairs to create the DFAT, trade barriers were eliminated during the Hawke-Keating years until the early 1990s and a long boom ensued. Consumers were the biggest winners, benefiting from the steady decline in prices of imported goods.
Fast forward to 2018, and it is clear that Trump has demolished many of the long-held badumptions that the world is inexorably on the path to …
It may well be that the style of John Fraser is clearer than that of the mighty Australians
Not only does he claim that this is not ridiculous, but even more silly, the trade war worsens because Australia has negotiated exemptions for its own steel companies.
After a discreet strategy, Malcolm Turnbull seems to have built his capital with Trump, whose respect for the phone call "in early 2017 on the refugees."
Trump needs help from him. Australia in its deep strategic battles against China and its obsession with North Korea
by pressing the broader argument for trade promotion policies in the US. If China collapses, there is a good chance that Australia too will be
All this happens while the Turnbull government is inexorably settling in a place where it can tell a credible story in the next elections.
The report of the Consumers Commission establishes a plan that could not only be consistent with the national energy guarantee, but also provide financial badistance to households. [19659004] This is true s This forces retailers to stop disobeying deliberately complicated and expensive customers. plans. This type of thing is as frustrating as the garbage that is being imposed on consumers by the mobile phone companies.
But more importantly, it suggests something impossible – it could keep the states with the NEGs while keeping coal enthusiasts from the Coalition.
The overall picture of the Coalition thus becomes clearer: they made income tax cuts, they submitted a plan to repair the GST distribution.
Part of Turnbull's strategy of not triggering an early election is that he wants voters to experience the benefits of some of these changes.
This week, consumer confidence has reached its highest level since 2013 suggests that there might be something to this idea.
However the big "but" in all this is if Trump's actions reverse the cart. The benchmark yield curves are flattening – often seen as a precursor to a recession – and the stock markets have the jitters.
By early 2018, people's thoughts might well be on how to cope with the next big
Jacob Greber is the economic correspondent of the Australian Financial Review. Philip Coorey is on leave this week.
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