March
Top Trump official presses Australia on coal compensation
Donald Trump’s top trade official has raised concerns with Don Farrell about a failure to compensate American investors for the cancellation of a NSW coal mining licence.
December 2024
How markets can get used to Trump’s bullying shock therapy
Markets need to quickly understand that the next US president and his team see trade in political, rather than narrowly economic, terms.
November 2024
US dollar surge to wreak havoc on $A, commodities
The powerful rally in the greenback since the US election has prompted strategists to rapidly adjust currency forecasts as investors flee metals and the Aussie dollar.
Transactional Trump could leave a vacuum in Asia
Trump would find that turning his back on allies was a more costly transaction than he thought.
July 2024
Economic populism clashes with Trump’s pitch to donors
Even as the former president leans into populist themes that make some Republicans wary, he has told major donors he is the only bulwark against higher taxes.
June 2024
The Trump trade hawk who is plotting from jail
Peter Navarro has a dark vision of the global economy. In a Trump 2 presidency which he may shortly be able to put into action.
December 2023
A new tax on imports and a split from China: Trump’s 2025 trade agenda
While the Biden administration has kept tariffs that Trump imposed on China, the latter would go far beyond that and try to wrench apart the world’s two largest economies.
December 2020
![Robert Lighthizer: “I think in some parts they [China] have done a reasonably good job; in other parts they haven’t.”](https://static.ffx.io/images/$zoom_0.2178%2C$multiply_3%2C$ratio_1.777778%2C$width_1059%2C$x_0%2C$y_0/t_crop_custom/c_scale%2Cw_280%2Cq_52%2Cf_auto/d63d66d055f561c08e21cb4909f6a6aa6cda90d7)
Lighthizer’s advice to Biden on China: ‘Hold their feet to the fire’
In a rare interview, the US Trade Representative defended the Trump administration’s record in shredding the status quo on trade and imposing unilateral tariffs on $489 billion worth of Chinese goods.
October 2020
What a cancelled trip to Washington says about Trump and trade
While Washington-Canberra national security relations are strong, a forced rerouting by Trade Minister Simon Birmingham around the US capital encapsulates the differences between the US President and Joe Biden on trade in the US election.
September 2020
China's threats of war push Taiwan towards US
President Tsai Ing-wen has one major problem: The Communist Party is threatening her life, with its Global Times newspaper saying she would be 'wiped out' in a war.
August 2020
US, China reaffirm commitment to Phase 1 trade deal
The latest breakthrough came amid growing concerns the deal could be on shaky ground in an increasingly confrontational bilateral relationship.
July 2020
Free trade agreements are protectionist, Lighthizer says
US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer said FTAs are "one of the biggest challenges to the multilateral trading system".
June 2020
Trump says China deal 'fully intact' after Navarro roils markets
The US President confirmed the phase one trade deal stood after his adviser Peter Navarro spurred a temporary stock slump with comments interpreted as a decision to end the deal.
US pulls out of global digital tax talks
The decision suspends the Trump administration's previous approach to find a global deal and could increase the likelihood that technology giants Amazon, Google and Facebook face a wave of foreign taxes.
The United States is bigger than an erratic president
Donald Trump is erratic at home and unconstructive abroad. Allies such as Australia must help keep American power engaged.
'Viciously partisan': Rudd rules himself out for WTO
Former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has ruled himself out of contention for the top job at the World Trade Organisation, citing the Liberal's vicious partisanship.
White House enlists Birmingham in search of new WTO boss
Australia has been asked to look for a heavy hitter who can fulfil Donald Trump's desire to shake up the WTO, Ambassador to the US Arthur Sinodinos says.
May 2020
US and China on the brink of a new type of cold war
A global pandemic might have served as an occasion for more co-operation between the superpowers: instead, it has only made the divide more obvious.
US, UK launch post-Brexit trade talks via video link
The talks are Washington's first major new trade negotiation in 2020, and take place at the same time as London works out trade terms with the EU, with a year-end deadline.
February 2020
India set to dazzle Trump with pomp as trade rows fester
The US President was on Monday set to be accorded the biggest public reception for any foreign leader in years during his visit to India, one that could help paper over the two countries' growing friction over trade.