Australia offered Trump critical minerals. This is how he sold us fool’s gold

It’s a lesson Australian diplomats in America learn quickly. Washington DC is no place for subtlety. You need to lay it on thick.

So US ambassador Kevin Rudd was effusive late last month as he spoke at a superannuation conference at the Australian embassy on Massachusetts Avenue.

Trump claimed he would give “great consideration” to Australia’s pleas on tariffs. They went nowhere.Credit: Marija Ercegovac

Rudd, a prodigious networker, was on a mission to cultivate the man Australian officials had identified as their best hope of influencing Donald Trump’s trade agenda, second only to the president himself, of course.

“This is a really important appointment for America and for the world,” Rudd enthused as he introduced Trump’s commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, to the audience. “Here in this embassy you are among friends. We regard the United States as friend, partner and ally for more than 100, 150 years.”

Rudd later made sure to tag Lutnick in a post about the event on X, the social media platform owned by Trump’s favourite tech bro, Elon Musk. Lutnick – a New York billionaire and long-time friend of Trump – had been confirmed by the US Senate the previous week.

The superannuation event, which Treasurer Jim Chalmers also attended, came at the midpoint of the government’s month-long campaign to secure an exemption to Trump’s 25 per cent steel and aluminium tariffs.

Trump set off the countdown clock on February 11 when he officially unveiled his tariff plan. Knowing such an announcement was coming, Australian officials lined up a leader-to-leader phone call that day. Albanese had called Trump to congratulate him on his election victory, but this would be their first substantial conversation.

The 40-minute call went swimmingly. Or so it seemed at the time. Albanese secured an agreement from Trump that he would consider a tariff exemption for Australia and say so publicly. The leaders agreed on the exact wording so that they would be in sync. No other country received a similar commitment.

As he signed his executive order on tariffs later that day, Trump delivered a typical performance. On the one hand, he declared there would be “no exceptions” to the tariffs when they came into effect on March 12. On the other, he described Albanese as a “fine man” and said he would give “great consideration” to Australia’s request for an exemption. Albanese was delighted to see Trump parrot his talking points about America’s rare trade surplus with Australia.

US President Donald Trump holds up the executive order outlining the steel and aluminium tariffs.Credit: AP

This was perceived as a political win for Albanese at the time, seemingly demolishing opposition claims that he would struggle to deal with Trump. But senior figures in the government would later rue Trump’s promise, arguing that he had raised unrealistic expectations of a carve-out for Australia and set Albanese up to fail. Rather than a gift, it was a curse in disguise.

“If the Americans had simply said, ‘Don’t waste your time, nobody is going to get an exemption’, we wouldn’t have wasted a whole month on this,” an exasperated senior government figure says.

The suspense – will Trump spare Australia or won’t he? – helped the tariff decision develop a symbolic status well beyond its limited economic impact. The Coalition made it clear that it would brand the government as a failure if it did not secure an exemption, given the Turnbull government had won a carve-out in 2018.

But from the very beginning there were ominous signs. A proclamation issued by the White House named and shamed Australia for surging its aluminium exports to the US in recent years, despite the Biden administration asking for more shipments to make up for sanctioned Russian supplies. “Australia has disregarded its verbal commitment to voluntarily restrain its aluminum exports to a reasonable level,” the proclamation said, a reference to a 2019 meeting between Morrison government ministers and US officials.

A day later, Trump’s senior counsellor for trade, Peter Navarro, told CNN: “Australia is just killing our aluminium market. President Trump says no, no, we’re not, we’re not doing that any more”. Navarro had served in Trump’s first administration; now he was back, more influential than before and nursing a grudge against Australia.

Things weren’t looking good. Chalmers returned from his Washington trip, where he had met Trump’s Treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, in a pessimistic mood about the chance of an exemption. Foreign Minister Penny Wong told Senate estimates hearings a couple of days later that Australia had a “greater hill to climb” than in 2018 in its bid to be spared from the tariffs.

But the government didn’t give up. It was clear that bromides about Australia’s trade deficit with the US wouldn’t work this time around. The government needed to present Trump with a deal he couldn’t refuse. But what could Australia offer him?

Jim Chalmers, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and ambassador Kevin Rudd.Credit: Australian embassy in Washington

Australian officials had been tracking Trump’s interest in critical minerals – strategically important commodities such as cobalt, lithium, manganese and tungsten that are essential to modern technology.

Access to critical minerals was, in part, behind Trump’s seemingly bizarre idea of seizing control of Greenland. And he had been pressuring Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to sign a deal to guarantee American access to that nation’s mineral deposits in exchange for future US military support. On his first day in the White House, Trump signed an executive order declaring the nation’s lack of critical minerals a national emergency. Australia, it just so happens, possesses these natural resources in abundance.

“We thought there was a deal to be done based on Trump’s comments,” a senior government figure says.

When listing Rudd’s flaws, no one has ever included laziness. Since early February, the government had been touting critical minerals as a sweetener it could offer the White House. But as the tariff deadline approached, Rudd and his team at the Australian embassy went into overdrive. Documents were written up, offering the US a guaranteed and reliable supply of critical minerals.

“There were propositions that were put in writing to the United States,” Albanese said at a press conference on Wednesday, referring to the critical minerals proposal. The positive response from the Trump administration gave the government hope that it could – maybe, just maybe – secure an against-the-odds carve-out.

Rudd pressed the argument in a meeting with Lutnick in Washington on Friday but could not seal a deal. A second call between Albanese and Trump, he decided, could help get an agreement over the line. But it was too late.

“As we got to the end of this negotiating process I formed the judgment that it was useful to make a further request for a follow-up call by the prime minister with the president,” Rudd told the ABC’s 7.30. “By the time the decision was taken, late Tuesday [Wednesday in Australia], we had not been able to secure that time.”

Rudd had pressed his case until the last minute. He was meeting with Lutnick again as White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told this masthead’s Michael Koziol that Trump had considered, and rejected, Australia’s bid for an exemption. Wong – who scored a rare invitation to attend Trump’s inauguration – learnt of the decision through the media like everyone else.

Team Australia’s charm offensive had failed. Lutnick repaid Rudd’s efforts by going on Fox News on Thursday and singling out Australia for dumping cheap metals on the US, a remarkable claim given Australia accounts for just 2 per cent of American steel and aluminium imports. So much for being friends.

The Coalition leapt on the government’s failure, singling out Albanese’s inability to get Trump on the phone and arguing that the critical minerals play had been left far too late. “After almost three years in office, Labor spent last weekend putting together a critical minerals strategy for our largest defence ally and essential trading partner, the United States,” said Susan McDonald, the Coalition’s resources spokeswoman.

The misplaced faith in critical minerals echoes earlier plays Australia had made that went nowhere. Late last year, Wong and Defence Minister Richard Marles met with Mike Pompeo, who had run the CIA in Trump’s first administration, but he turned out to be persona non grata in the president’s second term. Florida-based Australian golfing great Greg Norman appeared as a possible conduit to the president on tariffs in January, reprising a role he had played in 2016, but by February he said he had “no aspirations to want to do it on a regular basis”.

Would a second Albanese-Trump phone call have helped? “We did everything possible,” a senior government source insists. No other country received a tariff exemption, regardless of phone calls or White House meetings with the president. Trump’s belief, that he will revive American manufacturing and raise a fortune in revenue by erecting tariff walls around America, proved immovable.

Asked if the US had strung Australia along, Trade Minister Don Farrell told Sky News on Wednesday: “I don’t believe that there was any intention on the part of the United States government to give us an exemption”.

Having tip-toed around any criticism of Trump since he came to office, the government knew it needed to put the administration on blast. Albanese called the decision “very harsh” and “not a friendly act”; Wong blasted it as “unprovoked and unjustified”. Industry Minister Ed Husic went further, branding it a “dog act”.

As the tariffs went into effect, one minister privately fumed: “None of this makes any f---ing economic sense”. Another cabinet member argued that the US, not Australia, will ultimately lose out if this is how it treats its alliance partner: “We have things they need, and we can be very helpful or not very helpful”.

With the threat of more US tariffs looming, Australia’s offer of a grand bargain on critical minerals remains on the table. As for Trump, the only thing he sold Australia was fool’s gold.

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