Albanese says Australia has ‘ideological disagreement’ with Trump administration after US reveals anti-slavery tariff

Prime Minister Albanese says Australia has an “ideological disagreement” with the United States, after the US revealed a plan to impose a 12.5 per cent tariff on exported goods from the junior ally.

The new tariff is planned to be slapped on dozens of countries for allegedly failing to take action to prevent slavery and forced labour. It is the latest attempt by the Trump administration to hit nations with import taxes since the US Supreme Court struck down 10 per cent tariffs that impacted Australian imports in February.

Mr Albanese said any tariff on Australian exports to the US was “unjustified and inconsistent” with the free trade agreements between the two allies, and remarked that “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.”

US trade representative Jamieson Greer said the alleged failure to ban products produced with forced labour created a “dynamic where American workers are forced to compete globally on an unlevel playing field”. While Australian Trade Minister Don Farrell met with Mr Greer on the sidelines of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) meeting in Paris overnight, where Mr Farrell told him the tariffs were “unjustified”.

The tariffs would replace, and slightly increase, the US global 10 per cent temporary import surcharge when it expired on July 24.

Opposition Leader Angus Taylor said the tariffs were “rotten” and should not be imposed on Australia. But Former federal treasurer and former Australian ambassador to the US Joe Hockey said he was not surprised by the move by the Trump administration, stating that Trump could not see the inflationary and negative impact that tariffs had on American consumers.