Chalmers to push tariffs case on Trump team, still no meeting for Albanese

Treasurer Jim Chalmers will attempt to ward off tariffs and massive taxes on Australian superannuation funds investing in the US when he speaks to his American counterpart on Wednesday as the prime minister defends his absence from a key NATO meeting.

Anthony Albanese has sent Defence Minister Richard Marles to the NATO summit in the Netherlands this week, where Trump had reportedly hoped to meet with the prime minister and other Asia-Pacific leaders.

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and US President Donald Trump have not met face to face.

The prime minister has not met Trump face to face more than five months into the US leader’s second presidency, spurring demands from Opposition Leader Sussan Ley that Albanese attend the NATO gathering to make up for his cancelled meeting with Trump at the G7 in Canada.

“Now is the time for Australia to stand with the United States, our allies and like-minded countries,” Ley said. “The prime minister should be taking every opportunity to do so.”

But Albanese said other world leaders, including the president of South Korea and prime minister of Japan, were not at NATO despite reports Trump hoped to meet with them as a bloc and suggested his critics were being hypocritical.

“I’ve been to the United States on five separate occasions ... as prime minister,” Albanese said on Sky News on Tuesday. “And I do note that the same people who constantly say I should do more international travel, every time I do, are critical of it as well.”

Albanese’s planned meeting with Trump at the G7 this month was billed as a chance for him to build rapport with the president and make the case for the AUKUS nuclear submarines program and better treatment for Australian exporters and investors in the US.

But the meeting was cancelled when Trump returned to Washington to deal with the situation in the Middle East, and the president did not call Albanese despite doing so for other world leaders who also missed out.

Australian goods entering the United States are subject to a 10 per cent tariff, as are most other countries’ exports.

Congress is also considering legislation that would impose extra taxes of up to 20 per cent on investors from countries that it deems have anticompetitive laws, which could include Australia’s pharmaceutical benefits scheme.

Superannuation funds have more than $400 billion of Australians’ retirement savings invested in the US.

Chalmers said on Tuesday he would speak to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent about the legislation Congress is considering, as well as trade, tariffs, critical minerals and the global economy.

“This will be an opportunity to engage once again on issues which are central to this very important economic relationship between the United States and Australia,” Chalmers said.

The treasurer also invited Ted O’Brien, the shadow treasurer, to a round table on economic reform he is hosting with union, business and community groups in August.

“I think it would give us a better chance of making the kind of progress that we desperately need to see on reform and in our economy more broadly,” Chalmers said on Tuesday.

O’Brien said he had accepted the offer. “The Coalition will be constructive where we can and critical where we must, and I will engage in a business-like fashion,” he said. “The Coalition will hold the government to account every step of the way and won’t be there to rubber-stamp a talkfest.”

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