US President Donald Trump‘s escalating trade war has sparked an emergency meeting between the treasurer and the head of the Reserve Bank of Australia as interest rate cuts appear more and more certain.
Jim Chalmers stepped off the campaign trail to meet with Michele Bullock as markets continued to roil in the face of Trump’s newly introduced global tariffs and just hours before China ratcheted tensions up further with its own massive retaliatory hike on US imports.
Some economists now believe the response to the market mayhem could see the most aggressive interest rate cuts since the global financial crisis.
READ MORE: China hits US with 84% retaliatory tariffs
Chalmers wouldn’t be drawn on whether an emergency rate cut was discussed today, highlighting that it would be an independent decision taken by the RBA.
“It’s a really good opportunity for us to confer with, compare notes with and coordinate our efforts with the regulators and others involved in the market right now,” Chalmers said ahead of the summit.
“We are confident that we can weather these global conditions, but we’re not complacent.”
The market is now pricing in five interest rate cuts between now and the end of the year, taking the official cash rate from the current 4.1 per cent to 2.85 per cent by Christmas.
The moves would be designed to combat a global slowdown triggered by the trade war in full swing between the US and China.
The next Reserve Bank meeting will be on May 20, and a rate cut is now seen to be a sure thing. Market betting even shows a 30 per cent chance of a double rate cut.
READ MORE: ASX closes 2 per cent down, $40 billion lost by the bell
This would provide relief to people with a mortgage, but analysts say this kind of pricing outlines the growing fear of an economic event on the scale of the GFC.
Australian stocks endured another bleak day as Trump’s tariffs officially kicked in today with a 1.8 per cent fall to 7375 points scrubbing $40 billion from the ASX200 by the close of trade.
Those imposts included a staggering 104 per cent charge on imports from China, which Beijing quickly reacted to by hiking its own retaliatory tariffs on US goods from 34 per cent to 84 per cent.
Chalmers and shadow treasurer Angus Taylor clashed tonight over who would be best placed to navigate Australia through the tricky economic waters ahead.
READ MORE: Single Trump sentence is exactly what Australia didn’t want to hear
“We have always been the ones fighting for open markets, for our farmers, for our exporters, for our miners, for our manufacturers, and we will always be the ones who stand up for it,” Taylor said in the Sky News Treasurers’ Debate.
“When we were last in government, of course, we did take on the Trump administration, and we avoided tariffs.
” … Jim went over to the US not long ago, got the photo opportunity, but he didn’t come back here with what we needed, which is free access to the US market.”
Chalmers accused the Coalition of being full of “DOGE-ey sycophants” now pretending to “unhitch their wagon from some of the policies and cuts that we’ve seen in the US”.
“It is important to remind everyone that we expect the Australian economy to continue to grow, and Angus and Peter Dutton should stop lying about that. That’s an important correction, an early correction,” Chalmers said.
“When it comes to the space in the budget, the budget is in a much stronger position now than it was three years ago, and that’s because I’ve delivered two budget surpluses.”
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