18 hours Ago By Ria Pandey
Australia’s trade minister said he plans to hold his US counterpart accountable to promised negotiations for Australia’s exemption from Donald Trump’s global tariffs. Don Farrell told Sky News his discussions with America’s trade representative Jamieson Greer indicated the country was “prepared to have a discussion once the figure was announced.” “I’m going to hold him to his word on that,” Senator Farrell said.
In a list of countries, Australia was 21st with a 10 per cent tariff on all goods imported into the US. China faces new blanket tariffs of 34 per cent and Vietnam 46 per cent. Senator Farrell said his job as trade minister was “to represent the best interests of Australia to get these tariffs removed to negotiate”.
“I’m not scared of President Trump. I think what we now know is if he says something, we should assume that that’s what he’s going to do. “We’ve got the track record .
.. $20bn back from China.
We’ve negotiated new free trade agreements with India, to the United Kingdom, with the United Arab Emirates. Next Tuesday night, I’m talking with my European counterpart.” Mr Trump has argued the wide-ranging tariffs would level out the playing field and stop the US from missing out.
“If you want your tariff rate to be zero, then you build your product right here in America,” he told foreign countries,” he said. In response to America’s tariffs, Anthony Albanese announced a five-point plan from the campaign trail to curb their economic impact. That includes strengthening our anti-dumping regime, supporting affected sectors to expand our trade relationships with new markets, establishing an economic resilience program, encouraging people to buy Australian, and establishing a critical mineral strategic reserve.
While Opposition Leader Peter Dutton supported Mr Albanese’s proposed anti-dumping laws, he said a better deal needed to be struck imminently to avoid “economic detriment”. Mr Dutton said it was no victory that Australia was hit with the lowest tariff level, while other countries copped it much harder, saying it seemed Mr Albanese had no advance knowledge of the announcement. “The Prime Minister didn’t know anything about it,” Mr Dutton said.
“It was first made known to him when it was publicly announced. So that will talk about the influence that the Prime Minister has in relation to this matter. ‘Nonsense’: US hits back at Australia Meanwhile, US Commerce Secretary has hit back at Australia, again calling out our biosecurity measures which stops fresh US beef from being imported.
He said that was just an excuse to protect markets. “Our farmers are blocked from selling almost anywhere ..
. Europe won’t let us sell beef, Australia won’t let us sell beef,” Mr Lutnick told CNN. “It’s because they just wanna protect, they want to say: oh, what, the seeds are different? Other people in the world are using seeds that, insects .
.. come on, this is nonsense.
This is all nonsense. What happens is they block our markets.” CNBC host Ross Sorkin in another interview with Mr Lutnick asked why Australia and the UK, which both have trade deficits with the US, were also being hit with tariffs.
“Well look, they each have the lowest rate available, right,” Mr Lutnick replied But he then went on to say that “if you really studied it, you’d see they have a goods deficit with us, right?” “I mean the United Kingdom, part of their trade surplus is they have the London Metals Exchange and they count the importing of bullion. I mean come on,” Mr Lutnick replied. More to come.
