‘Insulting’: US Senator Mark Warner is Australia’s newest hero after slamming Trum over tariffs

US President Donald Trump has smashed Australia as part of his brutal trade war – and not only is it nonsensical, it’s also “insulting”.

OPINION

The list of Australian treasures just grew one name longer today.

Oh, we have our Magda, our Hugh, our Delta – but let me introduce you to Democratic Senator Mark Warner of Virginia.

In a matter of two minutes, one of the US Senate’s largely interchangeable roster of 66 white middle-aged blokes has managed to transform himself into Australia’s latest, greatest hero.

As the US unleashes the global trade Rapture, Senator Warner has taken up Australia’s cause and issued the Trump administration with a deliciously fiery drubbing over our shocking treatment by the White House.

Today, the full sweep of Donald Trump’s recently-announced, unhinged and imbecilic tariffs came into effect, which have already seen $7 trillion wiped off global markets.

In Mr Trump’s unleashing of his economic Kraken, Australia has not been spared.

We have been hit by a blanket 10 per cent tariff, despite us supposedly being on text-me-everyday bestie terms with Washington.

Senator Mark Warner has emerged as Australia’s newest hero. Picture: AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein

A particular issue is our meat.

In Mr Trump’s speech last week announcing his tariffs, his economic Manhattan Project, he called us out, saying, “Australia bans – and they’re wonderful people – but they ban American beef”.

And so we, like about 90 other nations, are facing a whole lot of impending economic grief, in a move that felt like someone ending a 15-year marriage via Insta DM.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the move was “not the act of a friend”, and then went off to journal his sads away.

This hurts, Washington.

This hurts.

We thought we were close.

The “we can call you at 4am” kind of mates who whisper nuclear secrets to one another and have a free-trade agreement and who are happy to let you keep the Hemsworths for half the year.

Mr Trump’s tariffing of Australia is also nonsensical, as we should already be in Washington’s good books, given there is a long-established trade surplus in America’s favour.

Donald Trump’s tariffing of Australia is nonsensical. Picture: Roberto Schmidt/AFP

Then, like a BFF at 11.47pm after four spritzes and high on sugary indignation, Australia’s newest champion, Senator Warner, entered the picture, ready to unleash hell on our oh-so-heartbroken behalf.

Overnight, he used his time at a Senate Finance Committee hearing to let the Trump administration’s top trade official Jamieson Greer have it over the White House’s treatment of us.

Senator Warner angrily let loose as live cameras rolled, arguing: “We have a trade surplus with Australia. We have a free-trade agreement. They’re an incredibly important national security partner. Why were they whacked with a tariff?”

Mr Greer then complained about us not wanting US beef like a pre-programmed MAGA-bot 2000. But Senator Warner was not having it, going on to argue that the “whacking” of “friendly’ Australia was “insulting” to us.

Too right, cobber.

What the White House has just done to us is to repay decades of loyalty and close military and business ties by effectively blocking our number.

In the days since Mr Trump first stood in the White House Rose Garden and used an Officeworks-printed-looking prop to up-end 80 years of global economic order, we Australians have been forced to really feel our feelings.

Ties between our two countries date back nearly a century, thanks to our willingness to join them in bloody wars, our shared membership of the globally strategic Five Eyes intelligence alliance and our steady supply of acting talent, ready to be piped straight into the Marvel lot.

Added to which, since 2021 we have also had the AUKUS Security Pact, with former Prime Minister Scott Morrison ditching the French at the eleventh hour to instead decide to buy $368 billion worth of nuclear submarines from America instead.

Elon Musk has now turned on the Trump administration. Picture: Brendan Smialowski/AFP

What has become clear now is that none of that mattered when the Trump administration was counting on its fingers to decide who to impose tariffs on.

After all, Belarus, Cuba, North Korea, Russia, Mexico and Canada dodged the bullet.

No matter the $65 billion the US already makes from us and all those nukey subs – we have still been dumped with no warning, like a high school sweetheart being unceremoniously told it’s over via text as her boyfriend and the lads pass through immigration at Denpasar.

Step back though and really, this day was inevitable.

With Mr Trump back in the Oval Office, it was like those photos of blokes in Thailand posing with seemingly docile, reclining tigers.

The latent danger, the unspoken threat was there.

He was always going to turn, they were always going to bite.

What Mr Trump’s tariff madness really makes clear is that his erraticism, his odd fixations (how many times has he used speeches to talk about windmills, hey?) and his sense of personal and American victimhood was only ever going to make him a danger to even supposed allies.

Currently, the White House’s list of friends seems to grow shorter by the hour with Wall Street and Silicon Valley having gotten the massive collywobbles – if not outright buyer’s remorse – after their months of sickening obeisance to MAGA.

We should even loan Mr Warner a Hemsworth. Picture: Valerie Macon/AFP

Overall, the combined market value of Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta and Microsoft has fallen 22 per cent, since Mr Trump walked back into the Oval Office.

Rather than El Presidente cosily looking after their interests, companies like Apple have been hit by the tariff truck, with shares in the company having plunged 23 per cent, given supply chain fears.

In quite a stunning backflip, First Mate Elon Musk has turned on the Trump administration, calling the president’s top trade adviser Pete Navarro a “moron” and “dumber than a sack of bricks”.

At this rate, Mr Trump is going to have no one left to invite to his sleepover except cadaverous Stephen Miller and his Darth Vader sleeping bag.

But Australia?

We have Mark now, who deserves to be duly rewarded with a container load of Tim Tams shipped forthwith.

Hell, we should even loan him a Hemsworth. (Not the good one, though).

Daniela Elser is a writer, editor and commentator with more than 15 years’ experience working with a number of Australia’s leading media titles

Originally published as ‘Insulting’: US Senator Mark Warner is Australia’s newest hero after slamming Trum over tariffs