Trump’s top trade adviser: ‘Australia is killing our aluminium market’
Washington: Donald Trump’s top trade adviser says Australia is “killing” the US aluminium market in a blow to Canberra’s hopes for an exemption from the president’s 25 per cent tariffs on aluminium and steel.
Peter Navarro, senior counsellor to Trump on trade and manufacturing, repeated accusations that Australian exporters were flooding the US market in contravention of an agreement between the two countries.
Peter Navarro, White House senior counsellor for trade and manufacturing.Credit: AP
“Australia is just killing our aluminium market. President Trump says, ‘No, no, we’re not doing that any more’,” Navarro told CNN on Wednesday (AEDT).
“What they do is they just flood our markets after Biden gave them an agreement that said, ‘don’t flood our markets, you can have a reasonable amount’. That’s what we’re dealing with.
“Our aluminium industry is on its back. It’s at 50 per cent capacity utilisation … in Australia, it’s 90 per cent. And we can’t afford not to have strong aluminium and steel industries.”
The comments come less than 24 hours after Trump told Prime Minister Anthony Albanese he would give “great consideration” to an exemption, largely based on the US enjoying a trade surplus with Australia. Albanese was “a very fine man”, Trump said following a 40-minute phone call on Tuesday.
The question to Trump about Australia in the Oval Office specifically referenced steel imports, so it was possible Trump only had steel in mind when he said he was considering an exemption, rather than aluminium.
A tariff proclamation issued by the White House hours later singled out Australia for criticism. “The volume of US imports of primary aluminum from Australia has also surged and in 2024 was approximately 103 per cent higher than the average volume for 2015 through 2017,” the proclamation said.
“Australia has disregarded its verbal commitment to voluntarily restrain its aluminum exports to a reasonable level.”
The Department of Foreign Affairs was contacted for more information, as was Australia’s embassy in Washington.
While United Nations trade data shows Australian exports of aluminium increased between 2016 and 2022, they have come down in the past two years. Based on 2024 data, Australia only scraped into the US’s top 10 sources of imported aluminium, behind Canada, China, Mexico, the United Arab Emirates and others.
Trade data also shows Australia’s share of US aluminium imports is a fraction of Canada’s and no more than 2 per cent of the total.
Asked about Navarro’s remarks at a press conference in NSW on Wednesday morning, Albanese pointed to Trump’s remarks in the Oval Office about giving great consideration to an exemption for Australia.
“They’re his words. They’re consistent with the discussion that I had with President Trump. It was a very warm and constructive discussion and engagement,” Albanese said.
A readout of the phone call provided by the White House overnight said the two men discussed both countries’ defence industry capacities, mutually beneficial trade and investment, critical minerals and “concerns about China’s aggressiveness”, as well as their commitment to advancing the US-Australia alliance and “upholding a free and open Indo-Pacific”.
Navarro, who was also a trade adviser during Trump’s first term, spent four months in prison after refusing to comply with a subpoena from Congress to give evidence about the January 6, 2021, riots at the US Capitol and Trump’s role therein. He was convicted of contempt.
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