Economic Update March 2026
In this month’s update, we provide a snapshot of economic occurrences both nationally and from around the globe.
Key points:
- US Supreme Court rules Trumps reciprocal Tariffs not legal
- RBA raises interest rates on strong inflation data
- US growth slows in the December quarter
- Iran situation destabilising markets, oil prices rise
We hope you find this month’s Economic Update as informative as always. If you have any feedback or would like to discuss any aspect of this report, please contact your Financial Adviser.
The Big Picture
For 11 months since the announcement of the US ‘Reciprocal Tariffs’ on April 2nd, disruption to international trade and monetary policy has followed. Trump’s tariff policy was sent to the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) for a ruling. That ruling has been returned in the negative but there are still many questions to answer.
Taxes and tariffs (which are taxes on imports) are ordinarily ruled upon by Congress. Trump didn’t go that route. Instead, he found rulings that he judged would allow him to raise tariffs without congressional backing.
The big reciprocal tariff that is central to Trump’s economic and trade policy was written as an ‘executive order’ (meaning Trump could make a decision without congressional assent) based on his view that various trade deficits caused an economic emergency for the US. The so-called International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) law Trump invoked was found by SCOTUS to be invalid in this case. A vast swathe of tariffs were found to be illegal.
Many of Trump’s other tariffs were based on invoking other laws and, for the moment at least, they stand. SCOTUS left it to lower courts to deliberate on how the illegal tariffs should be refunded. Almost certainly, that likely means there will be drawn out litigation to resolve the repayments issues.
SCOTUS in effect gave a green light to replacing the reciprocal tariffs by a global tariff. The law under which such tariffs can be operated limits the tariff to a maximum of 15% and for a maximum period of 150 days. Congressional agreement is required for extensions past 150 days.
Almost immediately, Trump imposed a ‘10% global tariff’. Within the same day, Trump said he was raising the tariff to 15% but no signed document appears yet to have been lodged. Clearly, Trump is trying to remain resolute and empowered in dealing with US trading partners.
There is no consensus on how Trump might go about rebating the illegally collected tariffs. Apparently, consumers cannot claim for a refund even though much of the tariffs were passed onto them as price increases. Companies can claim but they may need to show what, if any, tariffs were passed on as they can only claim for their own economic loss.
Along the way, many countries ‘negotiated’ with Trump to get a lower tariff than his initial demand. Given that the SCOTUS ruling invalidates many of the US-side of these agreements, it is not clear whether the US trading partners are held by the agreement. The European Union (EU) is reportedly reconsidering its obligations.
What makes resolving this tariff cancellation and replacement by other tariffs important is that Trump is facing the ‘mid-term’ elections later in the year. He is trying to show that he can improve ‘affordability’ for Americans. The 150-day limit of the 10% global tariffs occurs at the end of July, just as campaigning will be getting up to full speed.
If the Republican Party loses seats in the House of Representatives and/or the Senate, Trump will find it even harder to get his way in Congress (Congress being the collective term for both houses). Apparently, there are six Republicans ready to vote against Trump’s wishes even without losing seats.
We can only speculate how this year will play out but one possibility is that the trade chaos will get worse after November. Trump will not have substantial assets to redistribute from the tariffs collected. Earlier, he was even talking about replacing income taxes by tariffs.
Trump also launched substantial fiscal stimulus from the ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ (BBB). Meanwhile, US Treasury debt is mounting and hurtling towards $40 trillion.
Trump presumably thinks that if he could get the Fed to cut its rate to around 1%, other rates would follow. The cost of funding National Debt would then be massively reduced. The trouble is interest rates on longer term loans – like home mortgages – are largely unrelated to the Fed funds interest rate.
The six Fed interest rate cuts so far in this easing cycle have happened with hardly any impact on the yield of 10-year bonds – and longer-term debt. Moreover, if the Fed funds interest rate was cut to 1%, there would be lots of cheaper capital that might fund poor investments as in other times when ‘loose’ monetary policy prevailed.
Trump repeatedly argues jobs and the economy in general are strong. While the US is not close to a recession (at the moment), jobs data are steadily weakening. A twelve-month average of past new jobs data has fallen steadily from around 200,000 per month at the start of 2024 to just over 20,000 at the start of 2026.
It is true that the unemployment rate has not gone back to the high levels experienced in the past. However, the unemployment rate is much higher than a year or two ago. It is now 4.1% but it was 3.5% in mid-2023. And the nature of work has changed in recent times with work-from-home and the proliferation of home delivery services and ride-shares redefining the ability for people to find new jobs.
The Fed, like the RBA, has a dual mandate: to maintain price stability and full employment. Inflation rose sharply in the pandemic, not because of poor monetary policy but because of supply chain constraints; the Ukraine-Russia conflict; lockdowns and the like. As those factors diminished, questions were asked about whether monetary policy should be tighter to prevent ‘supply side’ inflation expectations from becoming entrenched. Some questioned if the Fed and the RBA put interest rates up too slowly.
In the US, the was an evident problem with the ‘shelter’ component of the basket of goods and services in the CPI inflation measure. It is a very large component of the CPI and rents, which are used to proxy many other housing variables, is hard to characterise well. Rents are typically set for a period of say a year or more in a leasing agreement. And it is hard to compare the rent for one property with that for another.
Shelter inflation was very slow to broadly return to the level of pre-covid times – from a peak of 8% in early 2023 to just over 3% now. On top of that, the government shutdown caused gaps in the sampling process in collecting data on rents. We found that CPI-inflation-less-shelter – a statistic collected and published by the official data agency – got down to 1.1% in mid-2024. That is, inflation was controlled below the 2% target in all but shelter (rents).
When tariffs started to be applied a year ago, economists speculated on what the impact would be on the CPI inflation measure. Because very large tariffs of 100% and more were being talked about, and Trump kept adding new tariffs to his wish list, no one could reasonably keep abreast of the possible impact of tariffs on the CPI. Some eminent economists argued that the CPI might be lifted by about 0.5% to 1%. CPI less shelter inflation peaked at 2.7% in 2025 which is consistent with that conservative economic view. However, some saw inflation continuing to build up and feared a return of sustained high inflation. CPI inflation reached 3.0% (including shelter) but it has already returned to 2.4%.
With the labour market as we have just characterised it, we think it would be appropriate to keep easing monetary policy. Of course, Trump had been berating – almost trying to humiliate – Jerome Powell, the Chairman of the Fed, into cutting rates faster and further. Possibly as a result, the Fed took a conservative approach to easing. While we think the Fed could have cut a little faster, we do not think the Fed’s actions have caused significant damage to the US economy.
What is clear, is that cutting or raising rates does not affect all goods and services to the same extent. Changing the prime interest rate is a blunt tool. The market thinks there might be two or three more cuts of 0.25% points in the remainder of this calendar year.
Powell’s term as Fed chair ends in May. Trump has nominated Kevin Warsh to replace Powell, but the Senate has not yet considered that proposal. Warsh seems like an eminently sensible prospect to chair the Fed. Several others of the potential nominees did not seem as appropriate.
The RBA increased its OCR (official cash rate) at the start of February. It was the first major central bank to reverse its interest rate cutting cycle to one of tightening. We are not supportive of this move. At the heart of the problem is the construction of the CPI. The federal and state governments gave various subsidies to households to compensate them for escalating electricity prices. While we agree that it was a good and timely policy, the manner in which the ABS processed that data is questionable.
We have conducted a detailed, rigorous analysis of the construction of the ‘rebate-adjusted’ electricity-price index and, hence, the CPI. We are confident that much of the recent talk of inflation spikes and the like is largely due to an inappropriate adjustment – or calculation. We think that the RBA should not have hiked and indeed should have continued with its cutting cycle.
Because of the nature of the ABS calculation, we predict that for the rest of this year annual electricity price inflation statistics will be much higher than should be the case.
The essence of the problem is that the ABS treated a flat dollar value of a rebate as a price change. It is not. The fall in the electricity price index was sharp in the beginning because the rebate was large. But then there is a consequential bigger increase in imputed inflation as the rebates ended. The only hope we have is that a member of the RBA has flagged the need to look at alternative CPI measures.
An additional fly-in-the-ointment for Australia is that the latest monthly jobs numbers looked a bit big. We agree but these numbers bounce around quite a lot. We focus on the annual growth rate in jobs (total, full-time, and part-time). The growth rates have been smooth and stable. Total employment is only growing at 1.0% pa and full-time at 1.2% pa when the population usually runs at around 1.6% pa. Job creation is not keeping up with population growth.
While news has been plentiful, including bad news, markets have largely brushed aside such issues. The ASX 200 and the S&P 500 have been fluctuating near their all-time highs during February.
Bond markets have also settled down with the US 10-year Treasury getting below 4.0% when it was 4.5% about a year ago. The 10-year yield at 4.5% and 5.0% for the 30-year yield triggered stock market instability in mid-2025.
And February ended with a joint missile attack by the US and Israel on Tehran in which the Iranian leader was killed. It is not possible to predict what effect on markets this conflict will have but it is reasonable to assume that there will be more volatility until a clearer picture emerges.
Asset Classes
Australian Equities
Australian equities (ASX 200) performed strongly in February, rising +3.7% bringing 2026 year-to-date gains to +5.7%. The broad index achieved an all-time high close of 9,199 on the last day of February.
The materials and financials sectors were the stand-out performers gaining +9.0% and +8.6%, respectively, last month. On the other hand, the health sector lost ‑13.4% over the same period.
International Equities
The S&P 500 also performed strongly in February. The index rose to within 3 points of the all-time high close of 6,979 but it did lose ‑0.9% over the month. Some of that loss is attributable to the big reaction to Nvidia’s earnings report at the end of the month. It seems likely that the heavy sell-off was due to profit taking as the company beat expectations of earnings, revenue, and forward guidance.
Japan’s Nikkei rose +10.4% in February as part of the reaction to the election of new prime minister, Takaichi who now governs with a two-thirds majority in the lower house.
UK’s FTSE (+6.7%), the German DAX (+3.0%) and Emerging Markets (+4.9%) also performed well in February.
Bonds and Interest Dates
The yields on US Treasurys slipped over the month. The 10-year bond yield ended February at 3.96% and the 30-year bond yield at 4.63%, well below the 4.5% and 5.0% experienced after the launch of the reciprocal tariffs, that then caused equity markets to tumble.
The CME Fedwatch tool has assigned a probability of 6.4% for the Fed to cut interest rates at its next meeting on March 18th. Despite this, there is only a 3.9% chance of there being no interest rate cuts this year. There is a 30.9% chance that there will be two cuts this year and a 28.7% probability that there will be three interest rate cuts.
Since a new Fed chair should be sworn in by the Senate before Powell’s term ends in May, the expected path of the Fed funds rate might undergo some volatility as the new Federal Open Markets Committee (FOMC) settles in.
We can understand why the RBA raised its interest rate by 0.25% points to 3.85% on February 3rd. The published inflation rate of 3.8% looked a little disturbing. However, we feel that the ABS inflation data has been corrupted by an inappropriate calculation concerning electricity price inflation embedded in the CPI formula, which, if relied upon by the RBA, could result in additional upward pressure on interest rates.
The Governor of the RBA, Michele Bullock, stated in the media conference following the February interest rate hike that “the labour market is strong” and that government spending had also contributed to inflationary pressure, a notion Treasurer Chalmers sought to defuse.
The Bank of England and the ECB each kept their rates on hold at 3.75% and 2.15% respectively.
Other Assets
Brent Crude (+2.5%) and West Texas Intermediate (WTI) (+2.8%) oil prices were up in February.
The prices of silver and Bitcoin fell sharply in one day during February. Any notion that Bitcoin is a store of value went out of the window. Bitcoin was valued at over $US120,000 in October and is now under $US70,000.
The price of gold rose +4.4% over February, but it took a one-day hit when silver and Bitcoin prices slumped.
The price of iron ore fell ‑5.0% and copper rose +1.7% in February.
The Australian dollar appreciated by +1.7% against the US dollar over February ending the month at $US0.7126. Our dollar traded for $US0.6693 at the start of 2026 and $US0.6550 at the start of FY26. Much of the strength in our dollar has been gained from the weakness of the US dollar.
Regional Review
Australia
The ABS reported that there were 17,800 jobs created in January of which 50,500 were full-time positions. In growth terms, total employment grew by +1.0% over 12-months while full-time positions grew by +1.2%. Total and full-time jobs grew by less than 1.6% in each of the last six months. We take 1.6% as a reference point for long-term population growth. Job creation is not keeping up with population growth which goes against RBA Governor Bullock’s claim at the interest rates decision media conference that the labour market is strong.
CPI inflation for January was 3.8%. Electricity price inflation, after applying questionable compensations for government energy subsidies, came in at +18.5% for the month and 32.2% for the year. The comparable data for inflation without the rebate adjustment (also published by the ABS) were 0.0% and 4.5%, respectively. Because electricity prices play a big part in the CPI, the difference between 32.2% and 4.5% as alternative estimates of electricity price inflation is more than enough to move the needle on the outcome for the CPI to 3.8% from a much more reasonable estimate. The ABS do not publish the weight given to electricity in the CPI so that we cannot calculate the effect of these two electricity price inflation estimates
Even if one could mount an argument for going along with the adjusted data, there is no argument for raising the interest rate to combat inflation. The electricity-price adjustment is locked in for a year no matter what interest rate setting is chosen.
The quarterly wage price index was released in February for the December quarter, 2025. Wages grew by +0.8% for the quarter and +3.4% for the year. When we take out CPI inflation to get what economists call the ‘real wage’, inflation-adjusted wages grew by ‑0.2% over the year. The real wage is ‑6.2% below what it was in mid-2022. Not only are workers more than 6% behind what they were nearly four years ago there has been a cumulative loss. To restore living standards to that in mid-2022, workers need to have wage inflation in the current quarter to exceed CPI inflation by about 6%.
China
China stood up to the US over tariffs, and with the new SCOTUS ruling, that seems to have validated their action.
China CPI inflation did fall to 0.2% for the year from 0.8%.
US
The SCOTUS ruling on tariffs puts a big dampener on Trump’s policies. He vows to make some ‘small changes’ to the current illegal tariffs to produce the same end. That seems very unlikely.
Essentially, the US government has been collecting illegal tariff revenue largely from US consumers and companies and will have to return some of it – no doubt after extensive litigation. Any new tariffs will only last for 150 days without Congressional approval.
It seems likely that the ’deals’ Trump struck with trading partners will fall by the wayside. He has already committed through the Big Beautiful Bill large payments with no compensatory funding. The Government debt will likely grow even faster to $US40 trn. There seems to be no appetite on the part of the Trump administration to control the debt.
US GDP growth fell to 1.42% (annualised) for the December quarter but growth was affected by the government shutdown. Dow forecast 2.4% growth (both figures annualised).
Jobs growth looked strong – at 130,000 new jobs in January when 55,000 had been expected. However, a rolling 12-month average of new jobs has been sinking for years. The latest 12-month figure is a little over 20,000 new jobs per month.
Europe
UK inflation cooled to 3.0% in January from 3.4%. UK unemployment rate came in at 5.2% – the highest since early 2021. Britain’s GDP growth was 0.1%.
France’s unemployment rate rose to 7.9% in the December quarter, 2025 from 7.7% in the September quarter.
Rest of the World
Japan’s economy seems to have bounced back with new vigour after the election of a new prime minister with now a big majority in the lower house. Japan’s inflation did fall to 1.5% from 2.1%.
Japan’s exports were at a three-year high of 17% against expectations of a 12% increase. They were up strongly from the previously reported 5.1%.
We acknowledge the significant contribution of Dr Ron Bewley and Woodhall Investment Research Pty Ltd in the preparation of this report.
