President Donald Trump cancelled his meeting with Anthony Albanese at the G7, officially blaming “Middle East tensions.” But let’s be real — Trump didn’t see value in Australia.
Welcome to Talking Business, a podcast produced in Melbourne Australia. The podcast is available on the Acast site, my own website, the Apple Podcast store or wherever you go to get your podcasts. Or you can get it at the Business Acumen website at www.businessacumen.biz.
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I am Leon Gettler. My job is to review and monitor the week’s news in business, finance and economics. I bring it all to you, every week.
This is episode number 19 in our series for 2025 and today’s date is Friday June 20.
First, I’ll be talking to Michael “Mike” Dallas-Petersen, an entrepreneur, father, and husband based in Summerland, British Columbia. He is also the founder of The Integrator Academy, a coaching program that teaches working professionals on how to start their own remote integrator business. It also helps online business owners scale, fix, or diagnose their online marketing and sales systems.
And I’ll be talking to independent economist Craig James about about what’s happening in the market next week.
But first, let’s talk to Michael “Mike” Dallas-Petersen.
So what’s happening in the news?
The G7 is unlikely to come to any common agreement with Donald Trump saying removing Russia from the former Group of Eight over a decade ago had been a mistake. Canada has abandoned any effort to adopt a comprehensive communique to avert a repeat of the 2018 summit in Quebec, when Trump instructed the U.S. delegation to withdraw its approval of the final communique after leaving. The once tight-knit grouping has struggled to find unity as Washington retreats from multilateralism and Trump overtly expresses support for Russian President Vladimir Putin. G7 leaders from Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and the U.S., along with the European Union, are convening in the resort area of Kananaskis in the Canadian Rockies until Tuesday. Speaking alongside Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, Trump said the former Group of Eight had been wrong to kick out Russia in 2014 after it annexed Crimea. “This was a big mistake,” Trump said, adding he believed Russia would not have invaded Ukraine in 2022 had Putin not been ejected. “Putin speaks to me. He doesn’t speak to anybody else … he’s not a happy person about it. I can tell you that he basically doesn’t even speak to the people that threw him out, and I agree with him,” Trump said. Though Trump stopped short of saying Russia should be reinstated in the group, his comments raise doubts about how much Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky can achieve when he meets the leaders on Tuesday. European nations say they want to persuade Trump to back tougher sanctions on Moscow. Zelensky said he planned to discuss new weapons purchases for Ukraine with Trump. Trump spoke on Saturday with Putin and suggested the Russian leader could play a mediation role between Israel and Iran. French President Emmanuel Macron dismissed the idea, arguing that Moscow could not be a negotiator because it had started an illegal war against Ukraine. A European diplomat said Trump’s suggestion showed that Russia was very much on U.S. minds. “The G7 should have the objective for us to converge again, for Ukraine to get a ceasefire to lead to a robust and lasting peace, and in my view it’s a question of seeing whether President Trump is ready to put forward much tougher sanctions on Russia,” Macron said. In another early sign the group of democracies may struggle to reach agreement on key issues, a U.S. official said Trump would not sign a draft statement calling for de-escalation of the Israel-Iran conflict.
And the US president left the G7 summit after the leader’s dinner. That was before a planned meeting with Anthony Albanese. Trump said he was leaving because he aimed to bring a “real end” rather than a ceasefire to the conflict between Iran and Israel, leaving G7 members trying to second-guess what he meant. Mr Trump’s press secretary Karoline Leavitt said he was returning to Washington “to attend to many important matters”. So what does this all mean? Well, it’s a blow for Anthony Albanese. The prime minister had travelled for four days, via make-work stopovers in Fiji and Seattle, for what would be his first face-to-face meeting with the president and, in one fell swoop, it fizzled into nothing. There appeared to be no signs the PM was aware Trump could cut his time at the G7 short. He was asked just minutes earlier if he was concerned their meeting which would address Trump’s tariffs on Australia and the future of AUKUS. The discussions on AUKUS had a greater urgency, given the US announced last week a 30-day snap review of the defence agreement between it, Australia and Britain, with the implication the review would act as leverage to force Australia to spend more on defence. Albanese had come well-prepared with arguments on both subjects.
The Middle East conflict and prospect of a protracted regional fight has put investors and business leaders on edge as the sustained move higher in oil prices recalls memories of the Gulf War, when energy inflation collided with recessionary conditions in the US, the world’s biggest economy. Direct Israeli strikes on Iran’s South Park gas field and a Tehran oil depot have raised fears of a threat to international supplies, while the Strait of Hormuz may be vulnerable to any retaliatory attacks, hobbling a major shipping route for both crude and Qatar’s LNG. Teheran might continue to target Israel and vice versa but other entities could be targeted as well. Orica chairman Malcolm Broomhead said business was carefully evaluating attacks between Israel and Iran amid concern it could escalate to a regional fallout.
Not surprisingly, the Reserve Bank of Australia will look through any temporary spike in inflation caused by higher oil prices, as economists warn that an escalation of the war between Israel and Iran could trigger a financial market meltdown. Oil prices jumped 13% over the past week to $US73 per barrel as markets braced for potential supply disruptions caused by conflict in the Middle East. Oil prices were already rising this month. But they jumped again on Friday after Israel launched its major and unprecedented attack on Iran. It saw brent crude futures soaring by more than 13%. It was their largest intra-day move since 2022 when Russia’s invasion of Ukraine caused a spike in energy prices. As the day wore on those prices retraced a little, but they still ended up settling around 7% higher, at US$74.23 a barrel (up $US4.87 a barrel), on Thursday’s price.. Peter Downes, Outlook Economics director and a former Treasury modeller, said that if the Strait of Hormuz was shut the price of crude oil would potentially quadruple or even quintuple. “That would be a major, major shock to the global economy, which is why the US and other interested parties wouldn’t let it happen. It would be massive for China and our oil import-dependant Asian trading partners,” Downes said. “It would be far bigger than the Ukraine invasion and, given the precarious state of the bond markets, would probably be accompanied by a financial market meltdown.” The most direct effect of a sustained rise in oil prices is through to higher petrol prices, which would temporarily put upward pressure on inflation, since petrol comprises about 3.3% of the consumer price index.
When Facebook bought WhatsApp for $19 billion in 2014, the messaging app had a clear focus. No ads, no games and no gimmicks. For years, that is what WhatsApp’s two billion users — many of them in Brazil, India and other countries around the world — got. They chatted with friends and family unencumbered by advertising and other features found on social media. Now that is set to change. Meta desperate for cash is introducing ads on WhatsApp. On Monday, WhatsApp said it will start showing ads inside its app for the first time. The promotions will appear only in an area of the app called Updates, which is used by around 1.5 billion people a day. WhatsApp will collect some data on users to target the ads, such as location and the device’s default language, but it will not touch the contents of messages or whom users speak with. The company added that it had no plans to place ads in chats and personal messages. In-app ads are a significant change from WhatsApp’s original philosophy. Jan Koum and Brian Acton, who founded WhatsApp in 2009, were committed to building a simple and quick way for friends and family to communicate with end-to-end encryption, a method of keeping texts, photos, videos and phone calls inaccessible by third parties. Both left the company seven years ago. Since then, Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Facebook, now Meta, has focused on WhatsApp’s growth and user privacy while also melding the app into the company’s other products, including Instagram and Messenger. Putting ads into WhatsApp opens a lucrative opportunity for Meta, which has been spending billions on artificial intelligence and other pursuits, while potentially raising questions about privacy.
Saturday’s military parade in Washington celebrating the 250th anniversary of the U.S. Army was sponsored by at least four brands that have strong financial and political ties to President Trump, raising questions about whether the event benefited his allies and supporters. Attendees who sought relief from the sweltering heat on the National Mall found free cans of a new energy drink brand sponsored by Dana White, who is the chief executive of the Ultimate Fighting Championship and one of Mr. Trump’s staunchest allies. Palantir, the data analysis and technology firm whose contracts with the federal government are expanding, and Coinbase, a cryptocurrency firm that donated to the president’s inauguration, also sponsored the event. Oracle, a database company whose co-founder is a close friend of Mr. Trump’s, received a shout-out on Saturday as a sponsor. U.F.C. was mentioned as a sponsor during the military procession and on the event’s website, but its spokesman said in an email statement that the company was not a corporate sponsor and that Mr. White had supported the program in his personal capacity. Federal regulations prohibit the use of public office for the private gain of officeholders or their friends, relatives or nongovernmental affiliates, said Richard W. Painter, who served as the chief ethics lawyer in the White House Counsel’s Office under President George W. Bush. “The parade is being used for advertising by these entities with close business ties to the president,” Mr. Painter said. “You’re in a situation where the U.S. government has been used to endorse a product.” If he had been Mr. Trump’s chief ethics lawyer, he added, he would have not wanted the sponsorships at all. Such an arrangement would be acceptable only if the companies were to pay for the entire event, Mr. Painter said, allowing the government to host the celebration without paying any tax dollars. The military parade was estimated to cost up to $45 million.
Donald Trump’s revision of the global trade and geopolitical order has pushed Australians’ faith in the United States to a record low. Polling by foreign affairs think tank The Lowy Institute found that only 36% of Australians trust the US to act responsibly in world affairs, a 20-point drop on the same indicator 12 months ago. The Trump administration’s imposition of a harsh foreign tariff regime has wreaked havoc on financial markets, while the president’s reputation for erratic decision-making has tested Australians’ faith in US global leadership amid escalating global tensions. Lowy Institute executive director Michael Fullilove said Australians’ optimism about the reliability of the US was at its lowest level since the think tank began tracking sentiment more than 20 years ago. “Australians are clearly unsettled by what they’ve seen of the second Trump administration, with almost two-thirds now holding little to no trust in the United States to act responsibly,” he said. Also fresh in the minds of respondents was Trump’s public dressing-down of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office, which signalled a broader shift in the US position on the eastern European nation’s long-running conflict with Russia. In the months since the poll, Trump has roiled global markets with a suite of broad tariff threats, including a “liberation day” announcement that sent stocks plummeting. In May, he announced a 25 to 50% tariff on steel and aluminium, and last week flagged a plan to review the AUKUS submarine deal.
And Australian treasurer Jim Chalmers has opened the door to tax changes beyond superannuation, admitting the federal budget is unsustainable and the economy’s stagnant productivity will not deliver higher living standards for working people. For the first time, Chalmers signalled Labor was willing to entertain tax changes beyond Labor’s tax rise on superannuation balances above $3 million at the government’s productivity roundtable in August, as he seeks to ensure the budget is put on sustainable footing. “I welcome tax being an important part of the conversation,” he said. “The ideas that people raise at the roundtable in the second half of August, I think it would be hard to come at these sorts of issues, sustainability, resilience and productivity without people raising their ideas when it comes to tax.” A review of the corporate tax system proposed by the Productivity Commission will aim to revive stagnating business investment by considering tax incentives for new capital expenditure, without blowing a hole in the federal budget, chairwoman Danielle Wood said last month. The government’s emphasis on the budget impact means that stakeholders may need to offer up potential tax rises to pay for other tax cuts, such as for business investment. Labor’s superannuation tax rise, including on unrealised capital gains, is estimated to raise at least $2.3 billion a year and rise further as more people are captured by the $3 million threshold which is not indexed to inflation. The head of the last major tax review in 2009, former Treasury boss Ken Henry, last week called on federal Labor to stop “fiddling” and buy in wholesale on taxation reform, suggesting a broader package of imposts on fossil fuel exports and increasing the GST to pay for company and income tax cuts.
The board of one of the country’s largest poker machine manufacturers said it obtained legal advice which concluded that it did not need to disclose that its chief executive was under criminal investigation to investors. Ainsworth Game Technology, founded by billionaire businessman Len Ainsworth, is facing questions from minority shareholders over its failure to disclose that chief executive Harald Neumann was under investigation in Austria in relation to corruption allegations. The gaming company told investors on Monday it had known about the investigations since 2019 when Neumann was a non-executive director of Ainsworth. It said the board determined it did not need to inform the ASX about the matter because the investigations were “insufficiently definite and preliminary”. “Periodic updates on the status of the investigations have been provided to regulators in applicable jurisdictions in accordance with the company’s licensing and compliance procedures,” the company said, “The Ainsworth board advises that it considered the matter and the company’s continuous disclosure obligations at that time, and after obtaining legal advice, determined that no ASX announcement was required.” Neumann, the chief executive since 2021, has been under investigation since 2019 over a range of allegations related to his time leading a family-owned gaming firm known as Novomatic. He denies any wrongdoing. Novomatic, a major shareholder of Ainsworth, bid to take over the business in April. It also remains under investigation by the public prosecutor’s office, known as WKStA, in Austria for alleged economic crimes and corruption.
Abu Dhabi’s national oil company has made a big bet on the future of gas with a $36 billion bid for Australia’s second-biggest resources company Santos, setting up a major test for Labor over the ownership of assets critical for Australia’s energy security. The deal would hand shareholders in the ASX’s second-largest oil and gas producer almost $30 billion in cash, but has been met with a lukewarm reception from investors and the South Australian government, where Santos was founded 71 years ago and remains headquartered. The $US5.76-per-share bid, which has been endorsed by the Santos board and came after two earlier, lower offers, comes amid surging oil prices during an escalating conflict between Israel and Iran. Treasurer Jim Chalmers said the deal was “potentially a very large transaction” and he would listen to the advice of the Foreign Investment Review Board before deciding whether to approve the sale to the consortium led by XRG, the Abu Dhabi government’s investment arm.
And that’s it for this week.
And next week, I’ll be talking to Jesse Kalsi a world-renowned numerologist and successful real estate broker by trade.
And I’ll be talking to independent economist Saul Eslake about Trump’s exit from G7, Trump’s “big beautiful bill” and his negotiations with China.
For the most exclusive access to leading economists and business leaders from around the world, subscribe to Talking Business from my website leongettler.com
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Looking forward to the next episode of Talking Business.
