Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has said fresh tariff threats imposed by the Trump administration are “unjustified”, as he defended Australia’s slavery response amid criticisms from the United States.
The comments come after Australia and 53 other countries were threatened with a 12.5 per cent tariff following an investigation by US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer that found Australia had “failed to impose and effectively enforce a forced labour import prohibition”.
“Any tariff on Australian exports to the United States are unjustified, they’re inconsistent with our free trade agreement, and also with regard to the specifics that have been put forward by their trade representative: Australia has robust, comprehensive, and world-leading legislation addressing forced labor and modern slavery,” Albanese told ABC radio on Thursday morning.
“We continue to use every opportunity that we have to advocate that US tariffs imposed in Australia are unwarranted, and of course, our view is that tariffs are actually a penalty on consumers in the United States.”
Australia is currently subject to a 10 per cent tariff from the United States, the lowest rate applied to foreign nations by the Trump administration. Government sources told this masthead they were working to understand the application of the new 12.5 per cent rate, but believed it would replace the existing rate.
Albanese highlighted the US’s trade surplus with Australia as further justification that tariffs should not be applied.
While much of the prime minister’s language was almost identical to a statement from Trade Minister Don Farrell on Wednesday night, Albanese also described the two nations as having significant differences in opinion on global trade.
“There is an ideological disagreement where the United States administration has broken with what was a decades-long understanding that tariffs are not positive for the country that is imposing them,” Albanese said.
“They increase the costs of goods and services in the country that is applying them to its consumers, and that free trade is in the interests of the global economy. It’s in the interests of Australia. It’s also in the interests of the United States.”
Opposition Leader Angus Taylor on Thursday described the tariffs as “rotten”, saying they should be fought.
“They’re wrong, they shouldn’t be tariffs like these imposed on Australia by the United States … They’re a great friend, and they shouldn’t be doing it,” he told reporters in Canberra.
Former Liberal treasurer and ambassador to the United States Joe Hockey lamented the move, saying he had personally argued with Donald Trump about the merits of tariffs.
“He just can’t see the inflationary impact and the negative impact on American consumers, and it just goes to show how the world’s on its head when a left-wing Labor prime minister is trying to convince a right-wing Republican president that free trade is actually the right way to go,” he said.
Countries including China, Vietnam, Japan, the United Kingdom and New Zealand have been hit by the same 12.5 per cent tariff, with the report using similar language for dozens of countries.
A separate group of six economies – Canada, the European Union, Ecuador, Indonesia, Mexico and Pakistan – were hit with a lower 10 per cent tariff because the investigation found they were the only countries that had “not failed to impose a forced labour import prohibition”.
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Nick Newling is a federal politics reporter for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.Connect via X or email.