Goldman Sachs CEO says Trump tariffs are part of a plan to 'level the playing field'

Sydney: US President Donald Trump's decision to impose tariffs is part of a plan to "level the playing field" that he views as unfair, but the end result remains uncertain, Goldman Sachs chair and CEO David Solomon told a conference in Australia.

"The president firmly believes that there are imbalances with respect to how trade exists, and he has a strong point of view that he wants to level the playing field aggressively," Solomon told the Australian Financial Review Business Summit in Sydney.

"He's executing on that view," he added, noting that "how things stay in place, how far it goes ... is some of the uncertainty that I'm talking about."

Asked about a forecast shared at the same conference by investment giant Blackstone chair and CEO Stephen Schwarzman that the US had no chance of experiencing a recession in 2025, Solomon said: "The chance of recession in 2025 is small but it's not zero."

The chief investment officer of the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, Edwin Cass, told the conference his country was "tied at the hip" to the U.S. regardless of tariffs, but "we'll try and diversify our economy a lot more and we'll try and do some things to make it more competitive on the world stage."