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9 News
5 days ago
- 9 News
Trump tells Goldman Sachs CEO to hire a new economist after bank's tariff findings
Your web browser is no longer supported. To improve your experience update it here Days after Goldman Sachs' top economists published research claiming price increases stemming from higher tariffs are poised to soon be borne mostly by consumers, US President Donald Trump is urging the bank's CEO, David Solomon, to get a new economist. "Tariffs have not caused Inflation, or any other problems for America, other than massive amounts of CASH pouring into our Treasury's coffers," Trump wrote in a Truth Social post on Tuesday. "David Solomon and Goldman Sachs refuse to give credit where credit is due." Donald Trump is urging the the Goldman Sachs CEO to get a new economist. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon) "I think that David should go out and get himself a new Economist or, maybe, he ought to just focus on being a DJ, and not bother running a major Financial Institution," Trump added. Solomon previously performed regularly at high-profile events. However, facing pressure from the bank's board, he gave up his DJing side gig two years ago. A report Goldman Sachs economists published over the weekend estimated Americans "absorbed 22 per cent of tariff costs through June," but that this share will rise to 67 per cent by October if tariffs "follow the same pattern as the earliest ones". Trump did not specifically reference that report in his post, however. Goldman Sachs declined to comment on the president's remarks. Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon is interviewed on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange in New York. (AP) The bank's chief economist, Jan Hatzius, is one of the most followed economists both in Washington, where he's met with former President Joe Biden and Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, and on Wall Street. Hatzius, an author of the report predicting the share of tariff costs consumers will cover, was an outlier in most circles of economists in 2023 for correctly predicting the US economy wouldn't enter a recession. On tariffs, Hatzius' team's forecasts share similarities with that of other leading financial institutions that are warning that consumers will experience tariff-related sticker shock. However, that hasn't been the case so far despite a slew of higher tariffs Trump has enacted over the past few months. New inflation data published Tuesday showed consumer prices rose 0.2 per cent in July, keeping the annual inflation rate at 2.7 per cent, according to the latest Consumer Price Index. World US POLITICS USA Donald Trump CONTACT US
Sydney Morning Herald
08-08-2025
- Sydney Morning Herald
America will be the chief victim of Trump's rampage
The average US tariff rate will settle near 20 per cent. This is comparable in nominal terms to the Smoot-Hawley tariff act of 1930, but tariffs were already high before that infamous bill, and the US was then a closed economy. Imports were just 5 per cent of GDP. They are 16.4 per cent today and include critical components that keep the productive machine going. 'We're looking at a shock to the economy seven or eight times as big as Smoot-Hawley,' said Paul Krugman, a Nobel laureate for trade theory. Euphoric markets are wishing away the reckless demolition of a global trade system built, led, and painstakingly nurtured by the US for 80 years. 'People just keep wanting to believe that Trump is making sense, that he isn't as ignorant and irresponsible as he seems. But he is,' said Professor Krugman. US economic growth slowed to 1.1 per cent in the first half of the year. You have to combine the two quarters because tariff 'front-running' distorted the GDP data. The relevant metric is that real final sales have been the weakest since 2022. 'We estimate that real personal consumption has now stagnated on net for six months, which rarely happens outside of recession,' said Jan Hatzius, the chief economist at Goldman Sachs. If you think America is booming right now, you are looking a) in the rear view mirror, and b) at the wrong data. The next year will see a drip-drip of accumulating damage as stagflation hits with the textbook delay. Loading Trump's tariffs are a tax on the US consumer. Maury Obstveld, ex-chief economist at the International Monetary Fund, says the pass-through from the Trump 1.0 episode was total. 'Not only did the prices of tariffed goods rise, they rose by the full amount of the tariffs. American households and businesses bore the entire burden; none was shifted to foreign exporters,' he said. The well-informed are watching the US Bureau of Labor's monthly index of pre-tariff prices for imports. This rose in June. It is the smoking gun that tells us who is really paying the tab. The Yale Budget Lab says consumers will face price rises of 40 per cent for shoes and 38 per cent for clothes. But higher prices are not the worst of it. The larger threat to the US is that it cannot substitute most of its imports. It would take a decade or more to rebuild industrial capacity across the board. To Trumpian Americans I can only say this: relish your triumph but do not expect to have many friends left in the world. Lorenzo Codogno, a former economist at Bank of America and now at LC Macro, says the US can cover just 10 per cent of current imports. 'It can perhaps add another 5-10 per cent over the next six months, but after that, it will take years. Trump's whole economic recipe is a disaster,' he said. Somebody must have whispered in Trump's ear that it takes 18 years to bring a new copper mine on stream. This week, he set off the steepest one-day crash in Comex copper futures since 1968 by exempting copper ore from his 50 per cent tariffs. Taxes of 50 per cent remain on imported steel and aluminium, as well as copper products, and these together are a leaden weight around the ankles of US industry. America imports a fifth of its steel. The internal US price now trades at a 105 per cent premium to China and a 45 per cent premium to Europe, according to GMK. It is the most expensive in the world. Steel Dynamics and Cleveland Cliffs both raised steel prices last week to lock in bumper profits behind tariff protection. American cars will soon cost more. Trump secured the removal of European tariffs on US vehicles and industrial goods, but this is washed away many times over by what he is doing to input costs. US car sales to Europe will fall. European car sales to the US will rise. Ditto for Japan. The aluminium story is worse. Twenty US smelters have closed since 2000. Only four remain. The country imports half its needs, and 90 per cent of its scrap, mostly from Canada. The US could revive some semi-obsolete smelters with enough subsidies, but this would not close the gap. It costs up to $US6 billion and takes six years to build a new one. Rising steel, aluminium and copper costs are already feeding through to the US oil patch, hitting just as the OPEC-plus cartel floods the global market with extra barrels. Oil insiders seethed with fury in the Dallas Fed's latest confidential survey. 'It's hard to imagine how much worse policies could have been,' said one executive. This cost shock comes at a time when America's shale boom is already long in the tooth. Scott Sheffield, a fracking pioneer, told this year's CeraWeek energy forum that the best tiers in the Permian would be exhausted by 2028. 'Everybody is running out of Tier 1 inventory,' he said. 'Drill, baby, drill' is a good line at MAGA rallies, but Trump is in fact putting marginal oil and gas fields out of business. His trade deals stipulate that Europe must buy $US750 billion of US energy exports over three years, South Korea must buy $US100 billion, and so on. As widely pointed out, this is insanity on stilts. America's entire exports of oil and gas were only $US166 billion last year. Europe's gas consumption is declining. The EU could not absorb America's gas even if Trump could produce it. There are not enough ships to carry so much liquefied natural gas (LNG), and not enough shipyards able to build new ones. Europe's LNG terminals are running near full capacity. European utilities have long-term gas pipeline contracts with Norway, Algeria and Qatar. Brussels has no legal authority to force them to buy US gas instead. And if I sound angry, it is because I am. Nobody will forget this disgraceful abuse of American power. Norwegian pipeline gas is the world's cleanest, with a lower greenhouse footprint than LNG from Texas. The EU would have to scrap its methane regulation to meet Trump's demands, which is part of his purpose. As for buying more American oil, EU refineries cannot handle much more low-sulphur US crude. It is the wrong sort. You do not have to be a free trader in the school of Adam Smith to see that America will be the chief economic victim of its own trade taxes and capricious market meddling. But the greater damage is geopolitical. That hits all of us in the fraternity of open democracies. Loading Britons can allow themselves a wry smile that Trump has just done to Brussels what it did to us in the Brexit wars. The EU used its political leverage over the UK at a vulnerable moment, weaponising emotions over the Irish border and fear of a cliff-edge no-deal. At least we won't have to listen to any more insufferable rants about how the EU is a big, mighty bloc that calls all the shots. But Brexiteers should restrain their Schadenfreude because the economic premise of Brexit was that the world is a benign place and that a rules-based global trading system exists outside the EU. None of that holds true anymore. To Trumpian Americans, I can only say this: relish your triumph, but do not expect to have many friends left in the world. We cannot yet discern the terrible fallout from these six months of power-drunk coercion, but it will run very deep. Mistreated allies become foes.
The Age
08-08-2025
- The Age
America will be the chief victim of Trump's rampage
The average US tariff rate will settle near 20 per cent. This is comparable in nominal terms to the Smoot-Hawley tariff act of 1930, but tariffs were already high before that infamous bill, and the US was then a closed economy. Imports were just 5 per cent of GDP. They are 16.4 per cent today and include critical components that keep the productive machine going. 'We're looking at a shock to the economy seven or eight times as big as Smoot-Hawley,' said Paul Krugman, a Nobel laureate for trade theory. Euphoric markets are wishing away the reckless demolition of a global trade system built, led, and painstakingly nurtured by the US for 80 years. 'People just keep wanting to believe that Trump is making sense, that he isn't as ignorant and irresponsible as he seems. But he is,' said Professor Krugman. US economic growth slowed to 1.1 per cent in the first half of the year. You have to combine the two quarters because tariff 'front-running' distorted the GDP data. The relevant metric is that real final sales have been the weakest since 2022. 'We estimate that real personal consumption has now stagnated on net for six months, which rarely happens outside of recession,' said Jan Hatzius, the chief economist at Goldman Sachs. If you think America is booming right now, you are looking a) in the rear view mirror, and b) at the wrong data. The next year will see a drip-drip of accumulating damage as stagflation hits with the textbook delay. Loading Trump's tariffs are a tax on the US consumer. Maury Obstveld, ex-chief economist at the International Monetary Fund, says the pass-through from the Trump 1.0 episode was total. 'Not only did the prices of tariffed goods rise, they rose by the full amount of the tariffs. American households and businesses bore the entire burden; none was shifted to foreign exporters,' he said. The well-informed are watching the US Bureau of Labor's monthly index of pre-tariff prices for imports. This rose in June. It is the smoking gun that tells us who is really paying the tab. The Yale Budget Lab says consumers will face price rises of 40 per cent for shoes and 38 per cent for clothes. But higher prices are not the worst of it. The larger threat to the US is that it cannot substitute most of its imports. It would take a decade or more to rebuild industrial capacity across the board. To Trumpian Americans I can only say this: relish your triumph but do not expect to have many friends left in the world. Lorenzo Codogno, a former economist at Bank of America and now at LC Macro, says the US can cover just 10 per cent of current imports. 'It can perhaps add another 5-10 per cent over the next six months, but after that, it will take years. Trump's whole economic recipe is a disaster,' he said. Somebody must have whispered in Trump's ear that it takes 18 years to bring a new copper mine on stream. This week, he set off the steepest one-day crash in Comex copper futures since 1968 by exempting copper ore from his 50 per cent tariffs. Taxes of 50 per cent remain on imported steel and aluminium, as well as copper products, and these together are a leaden weight around the ankles of US industry. America imports a fifth of its steel. The internal US price now trades at a 105 per cent premium to China and a 45 per cent premium to Europe, according to GMK. It is the most expensive in the world. Steel Dynamics and Cleveland Cliffs both raised steel prices last week to lock in bumper profits behind tariff protection. American cars will soon cost more. Trump secured the removal of European tariffs on US vehicles and industrial goods, but this is washed away many times over by what he is doing to input costs. US car sales to Europe will fall. European car sales to the US will rise. Ditto for Japan. The aluminium story is worse. Twenty US smelters have closed since 2000. Only four remain. The country imports half its needs, and 90 per cent of its scrap, mostly from Canada. The US could revive some semi-obsolete smelters with enough subsidies, but this would not close the gap. It costs up to $US6 billion and takes six years to build a new one. Rising steel, aluminium and copper costs are already feeding through to the US oil patch, hitting just as the OPEC-plus cartel floods the global market with extra barrels. Oil insiders seethed with fury in the Dallas Fed's latest confidential survey. 'It's hard to imagine how much worse policies could have been,' said one executive. This cost shock comes at a time when America's shale boom is already long in the tooth. Scott Sheffield, a fracking pioneer, told this year's CeraWeek energy forum that the best tiers in the Permian would be exhausted by 2028. 'Everybody is running out of Tier 1 inventory,' he said. 'Drill, baby, drill' is a good line at MAGA rallies, but Trump is in fact putting marginal oil and gas fields out of business. His trade deals stipulate that Europe must buy $US750 billion of US energy exports over three years, South Korea must buy $US100 billion, and so on. As widely pointed out, this is insanity on stilts. America's entire exports of oil and gas were only $US166 billion last year. Europe's gas consumption is declining. The EU could not absorb America's gas even if Trump could produce it. There are not enough ships to carry so much liquefied natural gas (LNG), and not enough shipyards able to build new ones. Europe's LNG terminals are running near full capacity. European utilities have long-term gas pipeline contracts with Norway, Algeria and Qatar. Brussels has no legal authority to force them to buy US gas instead. And if I sound angry, it is because I am. Nobody will forget this disgraceful abuse of American power. Norwegian pipeline gas is the world's cleanest, with a lower greenhouse footprint than LNG from Texas. The EU would have to scrap its methane regulation to meet Trump's demands, which is part of his purpose. As for buying more American oil, EU refineries cannot handle much more low-sulphur US crude. It is the wrong sort. You do not have to be a free trader in the school of Adam Smith to see that America will be the chief economic victim of its own trade taxes and capricious market meddling. But the greater damage is geopolitical. That hits all of us in the fraternity of open democracies. Loading Britons can allow themselves a wry smile that Trump has just done to Brussels what it did to us in the Brexit wars. The EU used its political leverage over the UK at a vulnerable moment, weaponising emotions over the Irish border and fear of a cliff-edge no-deal. At least we won't have to listen to any more insufferable rants about how the EU is a big, mighty bloc that calls all the shots. But Brexiteers should restrain their Schadenfreude because the economic premise of Brexit was that the world is a benign place and that a rules-based global trading system exists outside the EU. None of that holds true anymore. To Trumpian Americans, I can only say this: relish your triumph, but do not expect to have many friends left in the world. We cannot yet discern the terrible fallout from these six months of power-drunk coercion, but it will run very deep. Mistreated allies become foes.
