By Kirsty Needham and Alasdair Pal
SYDNEY (Reuters) – Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and his rival in a May election, Liberal Party leader Peter Dutton, said they would stand up for the country’s national interests in the face of looming U.S. tariffs that could hit Australian beef.
Australia has a trade surplus with the United States, and a free trade agreement that allows duty-free entry for U.S. exports. Albanese has said his government won’t retaliate against the Trump Administration with reciprocal tariffs.
Toughening his language in an election campaign, Albanese said on Wednesday he would “stand up for Australian interests”, and would not compromise on Australian regulations that are likely to be targeted by the United States.
Opposition Liberal Party leader Peter Dutton similarly told reporters: “My job is to stand up for Australians.”
“If I needed to have a fight with Donald Trump or any other world leader to advance our nation’s interests, I’d do it in a heartbeat,” Dutton said in a Sky News Australia interview.
Albanese said he “won’t compromise” on three key areas likely to be targeted, after they were listed in a report on foreign trade barriers released a day earlier by the United States Trade Representative.
“We won’t compromise on our Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, on our biosecurity or our Media Bargaining Code,” he said.
The report listed Australia’s ban on U.S. fresh beef products, in place since bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) was detected in U.S. cattle in 2003.
Albanese said Australia was not prepared to change its strict biosecurity controls on meat, because it “could do enormous damage to our meat products”.
Australia and the United States are among the world’s largest beef exporters, and a recent slump in U.S. beef production opened the door for Australia to export record amounts of meat last year, growing its market share in North America and Asia and channelling billions of dollars to cattle processors and farmers.
Australia exported A$4 billion worth of beef to the United States last year, its top market.
The U.S. trade barriers report also referred to Australia’s 2021 law requiring U.S. tech giants such as Google and Meta to negotiate with media companies and compensate them for the links that lure readers and advertising revenue.
In December, Albanese’s government said it planned to toughen the rules, and charge big tech firms millions of dollars if they did not pay Australian media companies for news hosted on their platforms.
Exports to the United States were less than 5% of Australia’s total goods exports, compared to one in four export dollars coming from trade with China, Albanese said.
Australia was focussed on expanding its exports to growing economies in South East Asian and India, he said.
Australian beef exporters were previously barred from China after a diplomatic dispute between Canberra and Beijing, which was resolved last year.
(Reporting by Kirsty Needham and Alasdair Pal in Sydney)
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