Albanese and Rudd will have to sell very different messages on US beef ban’s end

If the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach, as the anachronistic saying goes, could Donald Trump’s love of beef be the key to a tariff exemption for Australia?

Anthony Albanese will be hoping so, but the decision to end import restrictions on beef from the United States presents his government with a delicate communications challenge. He must convince Australians it is entirely science-based while simultaneously leading Trump to believe the move is a response to his forceful advocacy for US cattle exporters.

Donald Trump, seen cooking a hamburger, is a champion of the US cattle industry.Credit: AP

The hamburger-scoffing president had beef on the brain when he stood in the White House Rose Garden in April to announce his “liberation day” tariffs. Australians, Trump said, were “wonderful people” but “they won’t take any of our beef”.

“They don’t want it because they don’t want it to affect their farmers and, you know, I don’t blame them, but we’re doing the same thing right now, starting at midnight tonight, I would say,” Trump fumed.

His comments sparked fears of an imminent US ban on Australian beef that did not eventuate, but his grievance with Australian import rules permeated his administration.

US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick blasted biosecurity measures that stopped American agricultural exports as “nonsense”, saying: “One-point-four billion people in India and we can’t sell them corn, Europe won’t let us sell beef, Australia won’t let us sell beef.”

Cattle ranchers are a key part of Trump’s voting base. He is an avid beef eater who once marketed his own brand of steaks and delights in eating Big Macs aboard his presidential jet.

The US has technically been able to export beef to Australia since 2019, but beef sourced from Canada or Mexico, and slaughtered in the US, had been banned because of disease concerns. The integrated nature of the US supply chain meant no beef from the US made its way to Australia in that time (before even getting into the issue of whether Australians want to buy grain-fed American beef rather than our grass-fed meat). That rule has now been scrapped.

While Nationals leader David Littleproud claimed biosecurity appeared to have “been traded away to appease Donald Trump”, Agriculture Minister Julie Collins insisted “this decision is based on science” and is the result of a rigorous process that began in 2020.

The local industry has so far cautiously accepted the decision, while saying it wants to see more detail. Cattle Australia’s chief executive Will Evans said “we have to recognise that the science has been used here to make this decision” and the National Farmers Federation said the move is “the result of a long-standing, science-based review”.

If any evidence emerges that the government leaned on bureaucrats from the Agriculture Department to ease the restrictions – or to speed up the timeframe for a decision – then that will be a major scandal for those involved. Putting Australians at risk of mad cow disease would be far more politically risky than failing to score an exemption to modest tariffs imposed by an unpopular US president. Public servants will be grilled about the chain of events at the next Senate estimates hearings in October.

To reassure the public and the cattle sector before then, the government should release as much information as possible about the decision and any mitigations that will be put in place to protect Australia’s biosecurity. Collins started off poorly by confirming the decision in a hurried six-minute press conference on Thursday that left many questions unanswered.

As the government insists to Australians that its decision is a purely scientific one, US ambassador Kevin Rudd and diplomats at the Australian embassy in Washington will no doubt be making it widely known that the beef restrictions have been lifted. The Trump administration appears delighted by the decision, with Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins hailing it as a “major trade breakthrough” for Trump’s “Make Agriculture Great Again” agenda. The National Cattlemen’s Beef Association said it was “pleased that President Trump has successfully opened the Australian market to American beef”.

The government has likely benefited from fortuitous timing, though it is unclear whether this will be a game-changer in trade negotiations. Asked whether easing restrictions would deliver Australia a tariff exemption, Howard Lutnick said in April: “I don’t think the word ‘exemption’ is going to be a factor. I don’t think that’s such a thing. I think what there’s going to be is a world of fairness.”

No country has managed to negotiate its way out of Trump’s baseline 10 per cent tariff rate, and there is no sign Trump is willing to budge on this figure regardless of what he is offered. A reduction in steel and aluminium tariffs is a more realistic prospect, given the United Kingdom has negotiated a reduction in tariffs on British steel from 50 to 25 per cent. Landing something similar would be a modest but meaningful achievement for Australia.

If Trump looks a little more fondly on Australia because of a technical decision that was going to be made anyway, that’s a free diplomatic win for Albanese, who has yet to secure a face-to-face meeting with the president. Even better if Trump buys into the claims that the decision is because of his bluster. Never mind if, in the world of reality, that’s pure bull.

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