‘Lucky country': The unintended consequences of the Trumpian tariff storm
The Macquarie Australia Conference held in Sydney this week customarily has kicked off corporate Australia's dreaded 'confession season'.
With financial accounts for most of Australia's companies closing off on June 30, now is the time to acknowledge whether their results are coming up short and face potentially brutal sharemarket punishment.
But that was not really the case this year. Instead, the event provided an unusually upbeat insight into the unintended consequences of the Trumpian tariff storm.
The big confession that emerged from the conference was: Australia continues to be the lucky country, and we are attracting global funds fleeing Trump's attack on US economic exceptionalism and the institutions that underpin it.
There were already a few signs. The ASX's astonishing rebound from Trump's 'Liberation Day' tariff disaster last month was partly aided by the flight of money from the US into haven stocks such as Australia's banks, which have returned to stratospheric share prices.
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Investment managers at the conference cited alternative assets such as Australian water rights as items of overseas interest in investments that have no correlation to the US benchmark S&P 500 index.
'We are considered a safe alternative,' Macquarie boss Shemara Wikramanayake told the conference.
Australia is well-placed, relative to other economies, when it comes to fiscal and monetary levers to be used to ensure our economic resilience and strong institutional safeguards.
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