Anthony Albanese under pressure as Donald Trump’s tariffs to crash first week of federal election

Anthony Albanese is on a collision course with Donald Trump on tariffs. Former ambassador to the US and Liberal treasurer Joe Hockey has revealed why we failed to secure an exemption.

Donald Trump is poised to crash through our federal election with his looming “liberation day” tariffs to be a major test for Anthony Albanese in the first week of the campaign.

The Coalition has called on Mr Albanese to be “proactive” about the April 2 reveal of Mr Trump’s plans, rather than “passive” – after the Labor government found out from media reports Australia had not been exempted from earlier steel and aluminium import taxes.

Former ambassador to the US and Liberal treasurer Joe Hockey said the seeds of our failure to secure an exemption from those tariffs had been sown before Mr Trump’s election: “We didn’t have enough of a relationship this time around.”

“We didn’t have enough of a relationship this time around,” said Mr Hockey.

Mr Albanese insisted he has a “constructive” relationship with the US President and revealed he had received a briefing on the latest tariff talks on Friday morning, saying Labor would “continue to engage constructively in Australia’s national interest”.

Mr Trump’s erratic policy agenda has increasingly been causing political issues for Mr Dutton, who Labor have tried to cast as similarly minded when it comes to controversial issues like slashing the public service.

Donald Trump’s tariffs could wreck Anthony Albanese’s first week of the campaign.

But the arrival of the “liberation day” — when Mr Trump plans to unveil sweeping reciprocal tariffs against countries that impose import taxes on American goods — instead makes the US President a headache for Mr Albanese.

US pharma giants have been urging the Trump administration to consider Australia’s Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) for subsidising medicines as anti-American, while some agriculture producers are pushing the President to target Australian beef and wine.

AMP chief economist Shane Oliver said Australian exports could be damaged even if the country is not swept up in the new round of tariffs.

He said a direct hit worst case for Australia would be if its $6.1 billion meat export industry or $2.1 billion in pharmaceutical exports were hit with taxes by the US, but the economy could suffer even if these sectors were left alone.

Joe Hockey explains why Australia is in Trump’s sights for tariffs. Picture: Jonathan Ng

“The bigger threat is if we miss out on these tariffs, and he tariffs other countries, and it leads to an acceleration of the trade war and leads to slower global growth, and less demand for our raw material exports,” he said.

“The real danger would come if this global trade war comes and we don’t have other markets to export to because they’re all struggling as their own growth is hit.”

He said a full-blown global trade war could knock one per cent off Australia’s economy, worth about $27bn.

Mr Hockey, who served as ambassador during Trump’s first term and started building a relationship with the president’s 2016 campaign team long before that year’s election, said reaching out early was important to the US President.

“I don’t know that Anthony Albanese would have done it, but it would have been better if he’d met Trump and (Democrat candidate) Kamala Harris before the election, he’d met Biden of course.”

If he had, “Trump would have remembered that.”

“Trump is totally transactional,” said Mr Hockey.

Mr Albanese did not say when asked on Friday if he had asked for a follow up phone conversations with Mr Trump ahead of this new deadline since his last request prior to the steel and aluminium tariffs went unanswered.

Coalition campaign spokesman James Paterson said Mr Albanese needed to be “proactive, not passive” on the issue.

“This government found out about the steel and aluminium tariffs at a media briefing, and found out about warships conducting live fire exercises off our coast from Virgin pilots,” he said.

Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese holds a Medicare card as he speaks during a press conference at Parliament House in Canberra. Picture: AFP

In his election pitch on Friday, Mr Albanese said Australia was a great country that did not need to borrow ideas from other countries, but when asked if this was a reference to Mr Dutton copying Mr Trump, the PM said “people will make their own judgments”.

“People will have a look at the mass sackings of public servants and wonder, how is it?” he said.

Asked if Mr Albanese’s attempts to compare him to Mr Trump were a “compliment or a sledge,” Mr Dutton said he expected Labor to be “negative … day after day”.

“The sledge-a-thon is on by the Prime Minister (is) because he doesn’t have a good story to tell about his three years in government,” the Opposition leader said.

Pharmacy Guild President Professor Trent Twomey said it makes no sense for tariffs to be imposed on Australia based on the PBS.

“It’s very well known that Australia is a large importer of medicines from America,” he said.

“America also enjoys a large trade surplus with Australia.“

Prof Twomey said the election should also be an opportunity to sure up Australia’s medicine supply, given currently 90 per cent of all drugs on the PBS are imported.

“We need to urgently look at domestic manufacturing to provide a buffer to global threats which over the next few years could reshape our medicines landscape,” he said.