12/03/2025
Share:
12/03/2025
Share:
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese gestures during a press conference in Sydney on March 12. (AP)
MELBOURNE, Australia, March 12, (AP): Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said Wednesday that US tariffs on Australian steel and aluminum were unjustified, but his government would not retaliate with its own tariffs. US President Donald Trump said last month he was considering a tariff exemption for Australia, a free trade treaty partner that has traded with the United States at a deficit for decades.
A former Australian government secured an exemption with the previous Trump administration in 2018 based on arguments including that Australian steelmaker BlueScope employs thousands of workers in the US. Albanese said he would continue to pursue an Australian exemption. The 2018 exemption took several months to secure.
“It has been foreshadowed that no country regardless of its relationship with the United States has been granted an exemption. Such a decision by the Trump administration is entirely unjustified,” Albanese said. “Tariffs and escalating trade tensions are a form of economic self-harm and a recipe for slower growth and higher inflation. They are paid by the consumers. This is why Australia will not be imposing reciprocal tariffs on the United States,” Albanese added.
The US officially increased tariffs on all steel and aluminum imports to 25% on Wednesday. The US decision not to exempt Australia was announced days after a spat became public between Trump and the former Australian prime minister who secured the 2018 exemption, Malcolm Turnbull.
Trump described Turnbull, who quit politics in 2018 after being overthrown as prime minister by his own government, as a weak and ineffective leader. “Malcolm Turnbull, the former Prime Minister of Australia who was always leading that wonderful country from ‘behind’, never understood what was going on in China, nor did he have the capacity to do so,” Trump wrote on social media.
