Today’s scary story isn’t tonight’s Federal Budget that Dr Jim Chalmers will outline at 7.30 pm. The scary tale is tied up in warnings from the CEO of a leading business group that US businesses are pressuring Donald Trump to wack tariffs on Australian producers of meat, wine, pharmaceuticals, sugar and technology.

This comes as Wall Street was very positive overnight. According to CNBC, this is why: “Dow rallies 400 points to start the week on hopes Trump is softening tariff stance.”

In case you don’t think about the machinations of why our stock market rises or falls, take it from me that if President Trump comes up with acceptable, reciprocal tariffs on April 2, stocks will rise. If they’re excessive and unfair, stocks will fall. If the latter happens, we’d expect retaliatory tariffs from US trading partners and Wall Street and global stock markets will hate it!

While it’s in his hands, those hands are apparently being pushed to raise tariffs on Australian products that compete with US rivals.

The Daily Telegraph’s Clare Armstrong reports that

“Australian businesses are bracing for worst-case US trade tariff ‘hit list’ next week targeting meat, wine, pharmaceuticals, sugar and technology, despite reports the White House is considering exemptions.”

Armstrong quoted the Australian Industry Group’s chief executive Innes Willox, who said that “American companies have been ‘emboldened’ by US President Donald Trump’s tariff push and are looking to re-prosecute trade arguments with Australia that were settled 20 years ago.”

We have two opposing forces that Donald Trump must consider. On one hand, there’s a traditional ally called Australia with whom historically the US has a trade surplus, meaning they sell more to us than we buy from them. They have the trade upper hand in a total sense.

However, our pharmaceutical and agricultural products, particularly meat, sugar and wine, can out-compete US rivals. Apparently, these turkeys are whinging to the President to hit our local producers with tariffs.

Also, big tech firms such as Meta (Facebook), Apple, Tesla, Alphabet (Google) and Microsoft have complained that our Tax Office is wanting them to pay more tax and there are suggestions that the US President could side with them against us. Many US big tech companies reduce their tax by setting up in Ireland or The Netherlands and many other countries are trying to get these firms to pay the right amount of tax.

The latest whisperings are that we will be spared when it comes to the April 2 reciprocal tariffs. Later, however, we could see some specific tariffs on specific products, in the same way our steel and aluminium exports to the US could be slugged.

For investors, even if we only cop a ‘flesh wound’ from direct tariffs on our products, the big worry is that we are a big export trading country because our population is small, so if the US goes hard on China and the EU, we could cop the indirect effects. “You’ll have markets potentially being shut off one way for the other,” Willox speculated. “So, for any Australian company that uses componentry from China to export to the United States, that gets really complex and difficult.”

Our economy might be spared from serious tariffs but if the human curve ball called Donald Trump hits the trading world with excessive tariffs on April 2, our stock market will fall and take our superannuation fund balances with it.

If you need proof, remember stocks were up overnight because Wall Street thinks the Trump tariffs could be softer than we were expecting.