Australia rules out reciprocal move on US after Trump proceeds with steel tariffs

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By Renju Jose

SYDNEY (Reuters) -Australia will not impose reciprocal tariffs on the United States, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said on Wednesday, after President Donald Trump ruled out exemptions or exceptions for all countries on steel and aluminium tariffs.

Trump said in February he would “give great consideration” to exempting Australia from the tariffs in view of the U.S. annual trade surplus with the country, following a phone call with Albanese.

However, on Tuesday the White House announced that the previously planned 25% tariffs on all imported steel and aluminium products into the U.S. from all countries would take effect on Wednesday.

Albanese said the decision by the Trump administration was “entirely unjustified … and against the spirit of our two nations’ enduring friendship and fundamentally at odds with the benefit of our economic partnership.”

But he said imposing reciprocal tariffs on the U.S. would only push up prices for Australian consumers and spur inflation.

“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,” Albanese told reporters.

During his first presidential term, Trump exempted Australia from U.S. tariffs on steel and aluminium.

Albanese said he would continue to lobby the U.S. administration for a reprieve. He said he had requested a phone call with Trump but would not travel to the United States to meet the president.

“I’ll be sorting out Australia’s interests here,” he said.

Trump on Tuesday threatened to raise tariffs on Canadian aluminium and steel to 50%, but reversed course just hours later, in a rapid-fire move that scrambled financial markets.

While the tariffs will directly affect Australian metal producers, they will indirectly hurt miners that produce the raw materials used in metals manufacturing, said Scott French, an economics professor at the University of New South Wales.

“But due to the complexity of global supply chains, it’s hard to predict precisely where the impact will be greatest, but the overall effect is going to be negative,” French said.

A key U.S. security ally in the Indo-Pacific, Australia is a small global exporter of steel although it is the world’s largest exporter of the main steelmaking raw material iron ore.

Australian steel and aluminium exports to the U.S. represent less than 0.2% of the total value of the country’s annual exports and they are not in the top 10 products Australia sells to the United States, Albanese said.

The U.S. trade surplus with Australia was $17.9 billion in 2024, a 1.6% increase over 2023, data from the U.S. Trade Representative’s office showed.

(Reporting by Renju Jose in Sydney; Editing by Richard Chang, Lincoln Feast and Jamie Freed)