Lutnick calls Australian biosecurity rules ‘nonsense’, says Trump won’t back off

Washington: US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick says it is “nonsense” that Australia bans American beef imports due to disease or chemical concerns, arguing it is simply a protectionist tactic to prop up local farmers and block American sellers.

He also warned that US President Donald Trump would not back down on the sweeping worldwide tariffs he announced on Thursday until other countries changed their policies and eliminated those practices the US saw as unfair trade barriers.

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick holds Trump’s “Liberation Day” poster board.Credit: AP

“Our farmers are blocked from selling almost anywhere ... Europe won’t let us sell beef, Australia won’t let us sell beef,” Lutnick told CNN on Friday AEDT. The interviewer interjected to say this was “because of hormonal chemicals”.

Lutnick replied: “No, no, that’s not why. It’s because they just wanna protect, they want to say: ‘Oh, what, the seeds are different?’ Other people in the world are using seeds that, insects ... come on, this is nonsense. This is all nonsense. What happens is they block our markets.”

Despite a free-trade agreement, Australia prohibits imports of fresh US beef due to long-standing concerns over mad cow disease. The US trade office has consistently raised this as a grievance, but Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Coalition leader Peter Dutton have both said biosecurity measures are not up for negotiation.

In another interview on CNBC, Lutnick was asked why 10 per cent tariffs were applied to the United Kingdom and Australia when the US enjoyed a trade surplus with both countries. “Well, look, they each have the lowest rate available,” he responded.

Asked the same question on Bloomberg Television, Lutnick said: “Australia, which is a wonderful partner of ours, they buy a lot of our planes. If you buy our commodity, gas, that’s really what you need, not really what we need to sell you – it’s not the same. So the president decided: why don’t we have a baseline of 10 per cent?”

And on Fox News, Lutnick said the European Union “hate our beef because our beef is beautiful and theirs is weak”.

US and global markets plunged the morning after Trump’s tariff announcement. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 1679 points in its biggest wipeout since 2020, the S&P 500 sank 4.8 per cent and the Nasdaq Composite 6 per cent.

The White House dismissed the market reaction, with press secretary Karoline Leavitt saying the president was doubling down on a successful economic formula from his first term, and Wall Street investors should “trust in Trump”.

In a social media post, Trump likened the so-called “Liberation Day” tariffs to an invasive medical procedure, writing all in caps: “The operation is over! The patient lived, and is healing. The prognosis is that the patient will be far stronger, bigger, better and more resilient than ever before.”

During the announcement, Trump said he expected to field phone calls from world leaders trying to negotiate a deal on the tariffs. Albanese and Dutton both indicated they would seek to do a deal and pledged to travel to Washington as a priority if they won the election.

Lutnick, a billionaire friend of Trump from their finance days in New York, said in his series of interviews that while the president was open to deals, he wanted to see other countries act first.

“The president is not going to back off,” Lutnick told CNN. “But countries can fix their tariffs, their non-tariff trade barriers, which are much, much rougher … They are the monster that needs to be slayed.

“Then, and only then, will Donald Trump make a deal with each country – when they’ve really, really changed their ways.”

Lutnick said this did not mean a negotiation. “Negotiate is talking. No talking. Too late. These countries have abused us and exploited us, as he said yesterday. They need to change their ways, let’s see them change their ways. It’s going to be a long time, let’s see what they do. Not talking. Talking is nonsense.”

As this masthead reported, the tariffs announced by the Trump administration were not based on tariffs or other trade barriers levied by each country. They were calculated using a generic formula that divided the US trade deficit with each country by the country’s exports to the US.

Countries like Australia, with which the US has a trade surplus, received the lowest or “baseline” tariff of 10 per cent.

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