22 hours Ago By Paul Sakkal
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has made an eleventh-hour bid to avoid the worst of US President Donald Trump’s trade strikes by enlisting the advice of one of the most influential Australians in Trump’s orbit, golf star Greg Norman. Albanese dined with Norman in Melbourne on Wednesday night after a day campaigning in Victoria and Tasmania. The dinner discussion was viewed inside the government as a late and unlikely effort to improve Australia’s case with the Americans after Albanese failed to secure a phone call with the president over recent weeks.
“Great to catch up with Greg Norman tonight in Melbourne,” Albanese captioned the post. Senior government sources, unauthorised to speak about Australia’s manoeuvring to avoid “Liberation Day” trade barriers , said there was little hope of winning any exemptions from what could be 20 per cent tariffs on exports to the US. Ahead of Trump’s pronouncement on Thursday that could upend the Australian election campaign, the US administration has made clear it views Australia’s subsidised medicine scheme, a code forcing tech firms to pay for news, and food biosecurity rules as non-tariff trade barriers that hurt the profits of US companies.
After Trump won the 2016 election, it was Norman who passed on Trump’s phone number to then-prime minister Malcolm Turnbull so that the two could talk, following a request by then-ambassador Joe Hockey, also a friend of Norman’s. Trump and Norman have played golf together over the years and Trump has expressed admiration for the 70-year-old known as “the Shark”. This masthead reported in January that Norman was being used as a go-between for US and Australian officials.
The prime minister did not rule out taking the US to the World Trade Organisation, as it did with China when it banned Australian goods, saying on Wednesday he would not engage in “hypotheticals”. “They’re daily, daily discussions are taking place,” Albanese said of his government’s talks with Washington on Wednesday. “We are certainly prepared tomorrow for whatever outcome is determined and you’ll see that tomorrow.
” Australia does not impose tariffs on US imports, has a free trade agreement with the US and has tended to buy more than it has sold. Kevin Rudd with Greg Norman at the Australia Day Awards Gala in Washington in January. But tariffs formed the centrepiece of Trump’s economic agenda at the November election, and he has shown little appetite to spare long-term allies from the trade war he claims will lead to a huge amount of revenue paying down American government debt.
The Coalition has attacked Albanese for his inability to secure a follow-up call with Trump after two earlier conversations. Albanese said in 2017 that Trump “scares the shit out of me” and Australia’s ambassador to the US Kevin Rudd has also disparaged the right-wing populist in previous years. While Opposition Leader Peter Dutton has portrayed Albanese as too weak to deal with Trump, the domestic political debate over Australia’s relationship with the US has been complicated for Dutton.
Some Coalition MPs hailed the conservative “vibe shift” after Trump’s victory as an important signifier of future success for the Australian right. However, Trump’s erratic agenda has been unpopular in Australia, according to polling in this masthead , and Labor has begun to more overtly tie Dutton’s policies to Trump’s. Treasurer Jim Chalmers said on Tuesday that Dutton had “threatened cuts to school funding, which was right from the Doge [Elon Musk’s so-called department of government efficiency] playbook”.
“We also know that he wants to Americanise Medicare as well,” Chalmers added. “This is Doge-y Dutton, taking his cues and policies straight from the US.” The Coalition has said Labor’s rhetoric was unhelpful to maintaining good relations with the US.
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