Anthony Albanese has refused to say if US President Donald Trump is a threat to the economy despite branding fresh tariffs capturing Australia and dozens of other countries an “unjustified” move that will hurt two-way trade.
The White House this week followed through on President Donald Trump’s pledge to slap levies as high as 12.5 per cent on countries not doing enough to keep forced labour out of their supply chains.
Australia was captured at the top rate despite its standing as a global leader in anti-modern slavery laws.
The new tariff came five months after the US Supreme Court struck down the Trump administration’s universal 10 per cent baseline duty, which ended as the new one kicked in, effectively hiking Australia’s rate by 2.5 per cent.
It also came as renewed fighting between the US and Iran again disrupted oil shipping routes and forced up global fuel prices.
In an interviewed aired on Sunday, the Prime Minister was asked point blank if Mr Trump was “hurting the Australian economy”.
“Look, we deal with President Trump constructively,” he told the ABC.
“I’ll continue to do that.”
Pressed again, he acknowledged the war with Iran “is having an impact here in Australia” but would not be drawn on Mr Trump’s global tariff assault.
“My job is to deal with things as they are,” Mr Albanese said.
“And dealing with things as they are means treating our allies with respect, engaging constructively with them, including with President Trump.”
‘Unjustified’
Earlier, he vowed to raise the latest round of tariffs with Mr Trump directly.
“These are unjustified,” Mr Albanese told the ABC, adding that Canberra had already raised it “at every level of the Australia-US relationship”.
“We have very strong provisions on modern slavery. We’re strengthening those even further by going through the supply chain issues and making sure that indeed substantial fines and penalties can be paid if those issues aren’t dealt with.”
The Albanese government this month unveiled tougher anti-modern slavery measures threatening criminal charges for big companies that fail to stop modern slavery in their supply chains.
Companies charged would need to prove “they took reasonable steps to prevent modern slavery” to defend themselves.
Mr Albanese would not say if he thought the tariff was truly about slavery concerns but warned it would penalise Americans and “undermine” trade ties.
“Tariffs are a penalty on consumers in the country that imposes them,” he said.
“This will lead to higher costs in the United States and undermine the trading relationship that we have with our US friends.”
US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer last month framed the “failure of our most important trading partners to address the importation of goods made with forced labor” as disadvantaging American workers.
“This creates a dynamic where American workers are forced to compete globally on an unlevel playing field,” he said.
“We will no longer tolerate this disparity.”
Mr Greer welcomed some countries taking “initial steps to prevent the importation of forced labor goods” but said that “each of our trading partners must do more to ensure that trade does not perversely encourage and entrench forced labor globally”.
Some 50 million people are trapped in modern slavery, according to Walk Free’s Global Slavery Index, with it most prevalent across electronics and clothesmaking hubs in Asia, the Middle East and Africa.
Modern slavery, which includes forced labour, debt bondage and slavery, is a crime under Australian law, even if it happens overseas.