(Bloomberg) — Australia’s Treasurer Jim Chalmers has warned the impact of the new US administration’s policies will have a “seismic” impact on the global economy, ahead of his fourth national budget due to be handed down on Tuesday.
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Chalmers will unveil new cost-of-living assistance for Australians in the budget on Tuesday night, with subsidies on electricity bills to be extended for six months at a cost of A$1.8 billion ($1.1 billion) to the budget bottom line.
Overall, the treasurer 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 on Sunday. “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.”
Australia is due to hold elections by May 17 at the latest, with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese expected to kick off 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 in recent months as the vote approaches.
Albanese has struggled to address voters’ concerns over a national surge in cost-of-living, including a housing crisis and a rate hike campaign by the Reserve Bank of Australia to curb inflation. But with the central bank cutting interest rates for the first time in four years in February, 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,” Chalmers said.
While Australia’s government has pursued pro-industry and green energy policies similar to those of the former Biden administration in the US, Chalmers said there would be no new announcements in those areas in the upcoming budget.
