Afternoon Report | US whacks 100% tariff on pharma

This is the Fear and Greed Afternoon Report - everything you need to know about what happened in the markets, economy and world of business today, in just a few minutes.

1. Miners help ASX climb 0.2pc

2. US imposes pharma tariff

3. Qantas mayday landing

4. Visa warns on RBA fee cuts

5. Trump tees up TikTok deal

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to the Fear and Greed Business News Afternoon Report
for Friday, the twenty sixth of September twenty twenty five.
I'm Michael Thompson, and every afternoon we've got the five
stories that happened today that you need to know about.
Let's go with story number one is markets. Of course,
the SMPA SEX two hundred closed up just slightly today,
zero point two percent higher to eighty seven hundred and

(00:25):
eighty seven points. Just four of the eleven sectors finished higher,
with healthcare leading losses after a new pharmaceutical tariff out
of the US. More on that one in a moment.
The miners were the big winners though today, with well
really silver companies winning gold Like that one. The silver
price hit a fourteen year I'm sorry, that was terrible.

(00:46):
The silver price hit a fourteen year high, and that
pushed silver mines up five point seven percent, Andy and
silver up four point three percent, Unico silver up seventeen percent.
Good day all around for the silver miners. The big
iron ore miners also outperform, to Rio Tinto and BHP,
both climbing more than one percent. Gold miners they dipped
a little today and one actually left the Boss entirely.

(01:08):
Gold Road Resources delisted after its takeover by griuere Holdings,
which is owned by Goldfields. So now gold Road Resource
is owned by Goldfields makes perfect sense. The Boss finishes
the week up zero point two percent, the same as
today's gain, but is on track to record its worst
month since March. Onto story number two now in US,

(01:30):
President Donald Trump, as I mentioned earlier, has announced a
one hundred percent tariff on branded or patented medicines entering
the US from October one, So that is next week unless,
and this is significant, the drug maker has already started
building a manufacturing plant in America. Pharmaceutical imports were already
hit with twenty five percent tariffs in May. This new

(01:52):
impost really doubles down on that. It matters here because
pharmaceuticals are a top Bossie export to the United States,
worth about one point six billion dollars last year. Biotech
Giants CSL came out very quickly today and said it
doesn't expect any material impact to its business. Why because
it already has a big US footprint. It's got about

(02:12):
nineteen thousand staff, hundreds of plasma collection centers, a processing
plant in Illinois, a vaccines facility in North Carolina, with
more US investment planned over the next five years. There
are other Australian companies that also came out, including Tilix
Pharmaceuticals and miso Blast. They said there'd be no material
impact from the new tariffs on their businesses as well,

(02:34):
didn't stop a sell off, though CSL was down nearly
two percent. Tilix and Misoblast were both off around three
and a half percent. Story number three, a Quantus flight
from Sydney to Auckland, has landed safely after issuing a
May Day call over the Tasman Sea Today. Flight one
four one, which was a Boeing seven three seven with

(02:54):
one hundred and sixty two passengers on board, reported a
possible fire in the cargo about an hour before landing.
Emergency crews lined the runway in Auckland as the aircraft
touched down. Quantas said the pilot's followed procedure, but initial
checks suggest there was no fire. Engineers are of course
inspecting the plane. Passengers said the crew did an excellent

(03:16):
job keeping them calm during the flight. Witnesses counted more
than a dozen fire trucks waiting at the airport This
was a massive response to this. Two passengers were treated
for minor conditions. The airfield apparently is now operating normally.
Story number four. Visa has pushed back on the Reserve
Bank's plan to ban card surcharges and lower interchange fee caps,

(03:37):
changes that the RBA says could save shopers one point
two billion dollars a year and strip around nine hundred
million dollars from banks and card schemes. The concern is
from Visa that SMEs could wear the costs and Australia
may miss the next wave of payments, innovation and anti
fraud technology if revenue shrink. Visa says the ecosystem needs
about two billion dollars a year over the next years

(04:00):
to upgrade security and enable things like AI agent led
commerce that orders and pays for essentials automatically. Finally, story
number five, the multi billion dollar sale of TikTok is
getting closer in the United States after President Donald Trump
signed an executive order paving the way for a US
joint venture where Chinese company ByteDance owns less than twenty

(04:23):
percent of the platform. Under the deal, TikTok would have
a US majority board and US control of the algorithm.
The whole thing is worth evalued at around fourteen billion
US dollars now. Big names involved include Oracles, Larry Ellison, Dell's,
Michael Dell, Rupert, and Lachlan Murdock. But there is a catch.

(04:44):
Beijing has to approve any transfer or control of the
recommendation algorithm, which China actually classifies as export restricted technology.
The move aims to keep TikTok operating in the US.
We've been talking about this for a long time while
addressing data security and influence concerns following the twenty twenty
four law it passed last year that forces divestment from

(05:06):
foreign adversary control. That's it for the afternoon Report for Friday,
the twenty sixth of September twenty twenty five. Make sure
you hit follow on the podcast. We'll be back tomorrow
morning with the weekend edition of Fear and Greed a
Mark Thompson. Enjoy your evening,