March 29, 2025
Saturday 29 March 2025
Clare Armstrong, Lachlan Leemig and James Morrow
Northern Territory News
Donald Trump is poised to crash through our federal election with his looming “liberation day” tariffs to be a major test for Anthony Albanese in the first week of the campaign.
The Coalition has called on Mr Albanese to be “proactive” about the April 2 reveal of Trump’s plans, rather than “passive” - after the Labor government found out from media reports Australia had not been exempted from earlier steel and aluminium import taxes.
Former ambassador to the US and Liberal treasurer Joe Hockey said the seeds of our failure to secure an exemption from those tariffs had been sown before Mr Trump’s election: “We didn’t have enough of a relationship this time around.”
Mr Albanese insisted he has a “constructive” relationship with the US President and revealed he had received a briefing on the tariff talks on FRiday, saying Labour would “continue to engage constructively in Australia’s national interest.”
Mr Trump’s erratic agenda has increasingly been causing political issues for Mr Dutton, who Labor have tired to cast as similarly minded when it comes to controversial issues like slashing the public service.
But the arrival of “liberation day” - when Mr Trump plans to unveil sweeping reciprocal tariffs against countries that impose import taxes on American goods - instead makes him a headache for Mr Albanese.
US pharma giants have been urging Trump to consider Australia’s Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme as anti-American, while some agriculture producers are pushing to target Australian beef and wine.
AMP chief economist Shane Oliver said a worst case for Australia would be if its $1.6 billion meat export industry or $2.1bn in pharmaceutical exports were hit with taxes by the US. But Australian exports could be damaged even if the country is not swept up in the new round of tariffs.
“The real danger would come if this global trade war comes and we don’t have other markets to export to because they’re all struggling as their own growth is hit,” he said.
He said a full-blown global trade war could knock one per cent off Australia’s economy, worth about $27bn.
Mr Hockey, who served as ambassador during Trump’s first term and started building a relationship with the president’s 2016 campaign team, said reaching out early was important to the US President.
“I don’t know that Anthony Albanese would have done it, but it would have been better if he’d met Trump before the election. Trump would have remembered that,” he said.
Mr ALbanese did not say when asked on FRiday if he had pushed for a follow-up phone conversation with Mr Trump ahead of this new deadline, since his last request prior to the steel and aluminium tariffs went unanswered.
Coalition spokesman James Paterson said the PM needed to “proactive, not passive” on the tariff issue.