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China key to avoid global economic downturn from U.S. tariffs: Australian entrepreneur(Xinhua) 13:24, April 22, 2025
SYDNEY, April 21 (Xinhua) -- When the U.S. trade war weighs on the global economy, China's efforts to ramp up domestic consumption will relieve the world from a dim economic outlook, said a leading Australian entrepreneur.
Mike Henry, CEO of Australia's mining giant BHP, predicted that the U.S.-staged trade war will harm the global economy, but China will be the key to avoiding a global economic downturn.
Despite the limited direct impact of U.S. tariffs on the BHP, the implication of slower economic growth and a fragmented trading environment could be more significant, Henry said in the company's operational review for the nine months ended March 31, 2025, which was published on April 17.
"China's ability to shift toward a consumption-led economy and for trade flows to adapt to the new environment will be key to sustaining the global outlook," he said.
The BHP remains confident that the growing Chinese manufacturing sector, particularly for electric vehicles and machinery, will replace any lost demand from any other sector, said the chief executive officer.
North American customers provided barely 3 percent of the BHP's total revenues last year, meaning the direct impact of U.S. tariffs will not be significant for the company, according to a latest report by the Australian Financial Review.
However, the U.S. tariff policy may slow down the demand for mineral resources in other economies, the report said.
China is the BHP's biggest source of revenues, providing 34.7 billion of the 55.6 billion U.S. dollars of revenues generated in the year to June 2024, it added.
(Web editor: Zhang Kaiwei, Liang Jun)
