By David Crowe and Michael Koziol
A top adviser to US President Donald Trump has launched an extraordinary attack on Australian aluminium exporters by claiming they are backed by China and are flooding the American market, in a move to block exemptions for Australia from new 25 per cent tariffs.
Trade adviser Peter Navarro aired the claims – bluntly rejected by independent economists – to argue that all countries should incur the new tariffs on steel and aluminium despite Trump’s promise to consider the Australian exemptions.
White House senior counselor for trade and manufacturing Peter Navarro (centre).Credit: AP
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said on Wednesday the president had sent a “very clear signal” about the case for the exemptions, while he and others in the government refused to engage on whether Navarro was making false claims to block the Australian case.
Trump and Albanese agreed on wording in a 40-minute phone call on Tuesday about the exemptions being “considered” but the proclamations for the tariffs say they will be imposed on all countries by March 1, while also blaming Australia for breaking promises to limit aluminium exports.
Navarro, a top trade adviser in the first Trump administration and one of the president’s most loyal supporters, told CNN that the Australian companies were selling too much aluminium on the US market.
“The major companies in Australia are held – majority owned by – the largest shareholder is China,” he said in the interview in the US capital.
“And what they do is they just flood our markets after Biden gave them an agreement that said don’t flood our markets, you can have a reasonable amount.”
But the US government trade statistics show that Australia does not ship enough of the product to flood the market.
Australian aluminium exports to the US have more than doubled on a monthly basis, according to data from the US government’s International Trade Administration, but reached only 94,000 tonnes over the year to January.
Exports from Canada reached 3.2 million tonnes over the same period – more than 30 times the volumes from Australia.
The results showed that Australia was ranked eighth among all the suppliers after Canada, the United Arab Emirates, China, South Korea, Bahrain, Argentina and India.
Navarro’s claim drew criticism in Australia for misleading people about the case for tariffs on Australian aluminium when Chinese companies do not control the Australian producers.
Mining giant Rio Tinto owns the Bell Bay aluminium refinery in northern Tasmania and the Boyne Island smelter near Gladstone in Queensland, as well as holding a large stake in the Tomago facility in NSW.
One of Rio Tinto’s shareholders is the Aluminum Corporation of China, also known as Chinalco, but it owns only 14.5 per cent of the company. Chinalco sought to gain control of Rio Tinto in 2009, but the deal collapsed after facing business and political resistance.
Rio Tinto’s other big shareholders include global investors BlackRock and Vanguard as well as Australian Super.
The fourth aluminium refinery, at Portland in Victoria, is owned by Alcoa, an American company listed on the New York Stock Exchange and backed by BlackRock, Eagle Capital and Vanguard.
The other shareholders in Tomago alongside Rio Tinto are Norwegian company Hydro Aluminium and Australian company CSR, which was bought by French company Saint-Gobain last year.
Independent economist Saul Eslake said the official trade data showed that Australia was not big enough to flood the US market.
Eslake also pointed to Navarro’s history as a convicted felon who served time in prison last year because he refused to comply with a subpoena to testify in Congress.
“People would be justified in taking that into account when attaching any credibility to anything he says,” he said.
Navarro, who was also a trade adviser during Trump’s first term, spent four months in prison after refusing to comply with a subpoena from Congress to give evidence about the January 6, 2021, riots at the US Capitol. He was convicted of contempt.
Eslake also rejected the White House suggestion that the Australian industry was in some way controlled or owned by China, given the owners of the smelters were all independent companies.
“It tells you how much the truth or facts or evidence counts in any opinions in the Trump administration,” he said.
Navarro’s comments came less than 24 hours after Trump told Albanese he would give “great consideration” to an exemption, largely based on the US enjoying a trade surplus with Australia.
The question to Trump about Australia in the Oval Office specifically referred to steel imports, so it was possible Trump only had steel in mind when he said he was considering an exemption, rather than aluminium.
The prime minister’s office and Trade Minister Don Farrell declined to respond to Navarro’s claims. Opposition trade spokesman Kevin Hogan did the same. The Australian companies declined to comment on Tuesday and the Australian Aluminium Council would not express an opinion on Navarro’s statements.
”The majority owners of Australia’s four aluminium smelters are Rio Tinto (Bell Bay Aluminum, Boyne Smelters Limited, Tomago Aluminium Company) and Alcoa (Portland Aluminium Company),” said the council’s chief executive, Marghanita Johnson, in a brief statement.
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