Donald Trump’s return could hurt Australia, warn business leaders

Australian business leaders have sounded the alarm about Donald Trump’s economic plan if he returns to the White House.

Exclusive: Australian business leaders have sounded the alarm about Donald Trump’s potential return to power next year, warning his trade plan would smash the economy and betray our alliance.

The former president – who is leading Joe Biden in the polls and could be confirmed as the Republican candidate within weeks – is promising to hit all imports to the US with a universal 10 per cent tariff.

The radical policy would breach Australia’s free trade agreement with the US and harm domestic businesses that exported $30bn in goods and services to our closest ally last year.

Australian Industry Group boss Innes Willox said such a “reckless and indiscriminate act” would be “potentially calamitous for both the international and the American economies”.

Leading Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. Picture: Getty/AFP

“Security allies like Australia, who have a free-trade agreement with the US, would feel especially deeply betrayed if they were caught up in such a short-term, self-centred act of economic harm,” he said.

Business Council of Australia chief executive Bran Black said the tariff plan “would be bad for business and bad for all Australians”.

And Export Council of Australia chair Dianne Tipping said the Australian government needed to be lobbying Mr Trump and his team now to ensure an exemption for Australian businesses, including the meat and technology industries that would be most affected.

Australian Industry Group chief Innes Willox. Picture: Martin Ollman/NCA NewsWire

With less than a year until the presidential election, Mr Trump has established a clear advantage over Mr Biden in recent polls, with the Wall Street Journal’s latest survey giving him a lead of 47 per cent to 43 per cent in the hypothetical 2020 election rematch.

And while the former president is embroiled in four state and federal criminal cases that could put him in jail, he has also been rolling out a policy agenda that is even more extreme than his first four years in the White House.

Australia managed to secure a rare exemption from Mr Trump’s steel and aluminium tariffs during his presidency. But he is now promising to go further with “a system of universal baseline tariffs” and has said: “I do like the 10 per cent for everybody.”

Business Council of Australia chief Bran Black. Picture: Britta Campion/The Australian

Mr Willox said American tariffs in 1930 “undoubtedly prolonged the Great Depression”, and that “to repeat this folly would only serve to slow the global economic recovery”.

Ms Tipping agreed, saying it would “undermine all the work that’s been done for 30 years on trade” and would “contravene our free trade agreement”.

“It would be a really backward step for global trade,” she said.

Mr Black added: “One in four Australian jobs depend on trade and having open and transparent markets, including to the United States, is vital to the Australian economy and our economic success as a country.”

While in office, Mr Trump also pulled the US out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Mr Biden has not moved to rejoin the sweeping trade deal, and the trade pillar of his alternative Indo-Pacific Economic Framework has been hampered by the domestic political backlash.

Australian officials have cautiously criticised America’s trade policies, although Kevin Rudd went further prior to starting as Australia’s US ambassador, saying that the US was “happy to throw some of its allies under a bus” with its protectionist approach.