Greg Norman lobbies his friend Donald Trump over tariffs

Business leaders including Greg Norman have urged Donald Trump to consider defence ties before making his tariff decision.

Donald Trump with Greg Norman.

Australian business leaders, including Donald Trump’s close friend and former champion golfer Greg Norman, have urged the US President to consider defence ties and the size of the US trade surplus before his final decision on ­imposing tariffs on steel and ­aluminium products.

News Corp chief executive Robert Thomson, Dow Chemical head Andrew Liveris, JP Morgan head of investment banking Jennifer Nason, Northrop Grumman chairman Wes Bush and former US ambassador to Australia John Berry were also signatories to a ­letter sent to Mr Trump on Wednesday.

Their intervention came as China threatened “an appropriate and necessary response” to the trade war that the President says he wishes to unleash.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said in Beijing that his country’s economic success was a boon to the world with trade ­figures released yesterday showing a massive surge in Chinese ­exports to America last month — by 46 per cent in dollar terms — compared with February 2017.

As Mr Trump prepared to sign tariffs of 25 per cent on all ­imported steel and 10 per cent on aluminium, Mr Wang responded: “Choosing a trade war is surely the wrong prescription; in the end you will only hurt others and yourself,” adding that “the lessons of history show” that such wars have never proven “the right way to resolve problems”.

“China-US relations have gone through a lot in the last few decades, but dialogue and co-operation have always carried the day. There can be no alternative.”

Meanwhile, Mr Norman, who passed on Mr Trump’s phone number to Malcolm Turnbull after the US election, has a longstandinging friendship with the US President. The millionaire golfer has previously said Mr Trump has “got stars and stripes flowing through his blood, to the thickest I ever seen anything in life”.

In the letter sent to Mr Trump, the business leaders and former ambassador — representing the American Australian Business Council — played on security concerns to argue for exemptions for Australian companies.

“The value of Australia’s trading of steel and aluminium with the United States is an industry worth $545 million to Australia’s economy, which might be ­adversely affected should those tariffs be extended to include Australia or these companies,” the letter said. “Crippling these industries in our critical Pacific ally could seriously jeopardise our own power projection, readiness and repair capabilities in the Southern Hemisphere.”

The correspondence with Mr Trump also cited America’s “significant” trade surplus with Australia and said Australian com­panies have invested $459 billion in the US, employing 180,000 Americans.

“As the founding members of the American Australian Business Council, we respectfully request that your economic team consider the historic trade surpluses, our $1.29 trillion two-way trade ­between the United States and Australia, and our critical defence relationship before taking any ­action that might have demonstrable negative impact on the ­mutually beneficial American-Aust­ral­ian bilateral relationship,” the leaders argued.

Foreign Minister Julie Bishop, who is in the US, said Australia would continue urging that steel and aluminium tariff exemptions being granted to Canada and Mexico on “national security” grounds should be extended to Australia.

Additional reporting: Cameron Stewart