Crisafulli's bid to bring Trump – and the Quad
'The defence lens and the defence opportunities that come with that, and the investment opportunities, it would be a really big win for us and it's something I'm really pinning our hopes on.
'I'm going to keep fighting pretty hard for it.'
Crisafulli said he would lead his first overseas delegation as premier within the next month to both India and Japan, during which Quad hosting rights would be 'top of the agenda'.
Comment was sought from both Albanese and Foreign Minister Penny Wong.
While the American Chamber of Commerce (AmCham) celebrated July 4 inside the Brisbane Sofitel ballroom, a small band of protesters outside demonstrated against Australia's military cooperation with Trump's United States, including through AUKUS, and the ongoing war in Gaza.
Annette Brownlie, the chair of Independent and Peaceful Australia, said.
'We're very concerned about what sort of deals our premier might be doing with the American Chamber of Commerce,' she said.
'We don't know what sort of contracts, etc, they will sign. We are deeply enmeshed in the American military industry – the F35 fighter jets, parts of those fighter jets are made here in Brisbane.
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'It implicates us and makes us complicit for the genocide that's happening in Gaza and in Palestine.'
Ferra Engineering, based at Tingalpa in Brisbane's east, manufactures components for the US's F-35 Joint Strike Fighters and Crisafulli appeared to single it out while on stage.
'That's one company employing 100 people doing one small element in the backblocks of Queensland,' he said.
'Now that's a massive opportunity, and what we can do is make sure that we allow the private sector to do their job and invest in those partnerships that get people to look here [for investment].'
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Even if such a collapse doesn't happen on its own, says Hamilton, the US debt burden leaves it in a precarious position to deal with a crisis, such as a future pandemic, war with China, or some sort of crisis arising from the advent of artificial intelligence technology. 'There are all sorts of things we don't know,' he says. 'We're exposing ourselves to enormous risk.' Much of that risk depends on what happens to interest rates in coming years. Low rates between the GFC and the COVID-19 pandemic made US debt more affordable. That era is now over. Loading Trump has been badgering Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell for months to lower interest rates, saying it is costing the US government hundreds of billions of dollars a year in interest payments on its debt. But it is the long-term trajectory that matters, and Block says the consequences could be disastrous. 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