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Jennifer Hewett

This Month

Donald Trump’s antagonism to renewable energy is most obvious when it comes to wind power.

How Trump’s war on green energy affects Australia

Donald Trump’s plans for an energy revolution will blow strong political winds across Australia’s energy market.

The Boy in the Bubble

Trump fires up war on woke

Donald Trump is waging war on DEI policies. Does this mean the defeat of woke – or just another front in the fight?

Donald Trump in the White House

Donald Trump and the art of the diplomatic deal

Donald Trump has always loved a deal. Now he wants to force governments to gamble at his own White House table.

President Donald Trump holds up one of the executive orders he signed at the public rally in Washington’s Capitol One Arena.

Trump’s revolution takes shape and extraordinary becomes the norm

The formal traditions of an American presidential inauguration couldn’t obscure the extent of the Trump revolution immediately under way.

Donald Trump dances at a rally ahead of his inauguration as US president.

Trump’s triumphant return shows just how much the ground has shifted

The president-elect says his administration won’t waste a minute in delivering on its promises. The Trump revolution is under way.

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December 2024

Federal Reserve chief Jerome Powell is walking a tightrope.

Inflation risk crashes into political risk

Market tantrums and the fall in the Australian dollar in response to the US Fed show that next year is likely to be even more volatile.

Treasurer Jim Chalmers.

Budget update sounds a clear warning

Jim Chalmers is good at relaxed rhetoric about the economy. The mid-year figures are much tougher to explain.

  • Updated
The Albemarle lithium hydroxide plant at Kemerton in WA.

Critical minerals manufacturing dream tempered by harsh reality

Falling prices mean Australia’s ambitions to develop the industry and downstream processing are on pause. Is this a waiting game, or is it all over?

Nuclear play snares energy industry in political pincers

Peter Dutton is betting big on nuclear power. Labor labels this economic insanity. And the public won’t believe either party’s estimates of what will be cheaper.

November 2024

People watch as the sun rises over Ben Buckler Point in Bondi on November 27, 2024 in Sydney, Australia.

Energy efforts run into reality

The risk of power blackouts is real and rising this summer – along with the costs of frantically trying to avoid that happening,

Jim Chalmers in parliament

Why interest rates won’t come down

Forget the headline number. The latest inflation figures are not good news for a government trying to sell its economic credentials.

President Donald Trump was more polite to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in 2019. New US tariffs will change that.

Trump’s tariff war won’t spare America’s allies

Donald Trump is promising 25 per cent tariffs on supposedly close allies like Canada and Mexico as well as China. Where does that leave Australia?

Jim Chalmers and Anthony Albanese

Labor struggles down the last stretch

The Albanese government’s numbers don’t add up for voters as the election looms.

Chalmers sells intervention as economic salve

The US may have a different culture, but its politics still provide a recent lesson in the electoral risks of rural voters feeling ignored by governments or left out of services.

China’s President Xi Jinping and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.

Trump picks put Australia in the crossfire with China

The frenzy around a reinvigorated Republican administration can only make the voter ride much bumpier for everyone, Anthony Albanese included.

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Opposition Leader Peter Dutton and Immigration Minister Tony Burke.

Foreign students row is political kryptonite

The government accuses Peter Dutton of hypocrisy for rejecting its foreign student caps, but the Opposition Leader is not about to do Labor any favours this close to an election.

Anthony Albanese in Peru.

PM’s financial advice reforms at risk of collapse

The government’s efforts to get a deal on giving more Australians access to good financial advice without paying thousands of dollars have stalled after an impasse on funding.

  • Updated
Tony Ottaviano is under no illusions that the game has changed for lithium, and Liontown needs to adapt.

Liontown survived the lithium carnage, but can it handle Donald Trump?

After taking a wild ride in lithium over the past year, Liontown Resources thinks it can also adapt to whatever the Trump administration produces.

Musk and Trump have formed a political alliance that should last for a long time.

Musk rings alarm bells for business of government

Why the appointment of the world’s richest man to a cost-cutting role in the Trumpiverse challenges Labor’s approach to government in Australia.

Donald Trump with Marco Rubio before his expected appointment as US Secretary of State

Trump’s foreign policy agenda a high-stakes guessing game

Donald Trump’s presidency is about to show up the contradictions in Australia’s defence spending and its domestic economy.

Original URL: https://www.afr.com/by/jennifer-hewett-j7gc3