Australia PM Albanese says US trade tariff ‘not the act of a friend’

SYDNEY – US President Donald Trump’s 10 per cent tariffs on close ally Australia are “not the act of a friend”, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said on April 3, but added that his country will not retaliate with its own levies.

“This is not the act of a friend,” Mr Albanese told a news conference after Mr Trump’s tariff announcement, saying one-in-four Australian jobs depend on trade.

The centre-left Australian leader, who faces a tightly contested general election on May 3, said Australia charged nothing on US imports and should face zero US tariffs.

“These tariffs are not unexpected, but let me be clear, they are totally unwarranted,” he said.

The US has been Australia’s strongest military ally since World War II, and the two countries have joined Britain in a deal to provide Australia’s navy with stealthy nuclear-powered submarines.

Mr Albanese said the new measures could change how people see their relationship.

“The Australian people have every right to view this action by the Trump administration as undermining our free and fair trading relationship and counter to the shared values that have always been at the heart of our two nations’ longstanding friendship,” he said.

“This will have consequences for how Australians see this relationship,” he added.

“These are uncertain times, but Australians can be absolutely certain of this: our government will always stand up for Australian jobs, Australian industry, Australian consumers and Australian values.”

Announcing the tariffs, Mr Trump said Australians were “wonderful people” but accused them of banning US beef while exporting billions of dollars worth of their own beef to America.

“They don’t take any of our beef,” he said.

“They don’t want it, because they don’t want it to effect any of their farmers. And I don’t blame them, but we’re doing the same thing right now starting about midnight tonight, I would say.”

Beef over biosecurity

Negotiations to avoid a tariff stalled over beef as Australia insisted on US meat imports meeting its biosecurity standards, Mr Albanese said.

Biosecurity is one of three areas, alongside subsidised pharmaceuticals that lower health costs to Australians and rules on US social media platforms, raised by the US as trade barriers that Australia would not compromise on, he told reporters.

Australia will offer financial support to affected exporters to help them find new markets, with a fund offering A$1 billion (S$845.3 million) in zero-interest loans, and direct government departments to “buy Australian”.

National Farmers Federation president David Jochinke said the tariffs were a “disappointing step backward for our nations and for the global economy”, but the industry would prevail because its farmers are “among the least subsidised farmers in the world”.

Exports to the US are less than 5 per cent of Australia’s total goods exports, compared with one in four export dollars coming from trade with China.

Australian steel and aluminium exports are also subject to

US tariffs on the metals announced in March

, though its shipments to the US are a fraction of the value of the country’s total annual exports. Less clear is the impact from those levies on Australia’s mining sector, which supplies much of the world’s iron ore and other metal-making raw materials.

Trade Minister Don Farrell said Australia was opening new exports markets in India and the Middle East, and would seek to revive free trade negotiations with the European Union that stalled in 2024 over access for Australian beef.

“The world has changed,” he said.

New Zealand’s Trade Minister Todd McClay said a 10 per cent tariff on the country, a large exporter of lean beef used in US hamburgers, meant its exports remain competitive in the US market, compared with nations hit by higher tariffs. AFP, REUTERS