By Mike Foley and Millie Muroi
Australia’s farmers are next in line to be turned into red meat for Donald Trump’s supporters, with the US president promising to protect American agriculture with tariffs on agriculture imports within weeks.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese denounced the Trump administration’s decision not to spare Australia from his 25 per cent tariffs on steel and aluminium imports. Together, Australian exports to the US of these materials are worth a collective $1 billion.
Tom Bull on his Kinross property in Holbrook, in the NSW Riverina.
But that would be chicken feed compared to the impact of extra charges that could be levied on lamb and beef businesses, 90 per cent of which are family-owned. The US is their biggest market and they collectively sell more than $5 billion of goods to the US, five times the value of Australian steel and aluminium.
“To the Great Farmers of the United States: Get ready to start making a lot of agricultural product to be sold INSIDE of the United States. Tariffs will go on external product on April 2nd. Have fun!” Trump wrote on social media earlier this month.
US ambassador Kevin Rudd said trade negotiations with the Trump administration had been “tough and hard” because the president was pursuing a “hardline and transactional” agenda.
“The America we’re dealing with since the 20th of January is a vastly different America from the past, and in fact, significantly different from the period of the first Trump administration,” Rudd told the ABC’s 7.30.
“This administration is more nationalist on questions of foreign policy, more protectionist on trade policy, and much more transactional in its overall approach to international negotiations.“
Foreign Minister Penny Wong conceded on Wednesday that the government had been in talks with the Trump administration to give the US special access to Australia’s critical minerals.
Government sources said Australian officials presented a significant written proposal over the weekend offering mineral wealth in exchange for a tariff exemption, but the offer failed to sway the Trump administration.
The US is a lucrative market for Australia’s quality produce, but US farmers resent the international competition and have been calling for more than two years for tariffs on Australian imports.
R-CALF bills itself as the largest livestock farmer representative group in the US and earlier this month it called for agriculture tariffs to match the 25 per cent on steel and aluminium.
“Domestic sheep production is fast being displaced with cheaper imports from Australia, so much so that the US sheep producer now only maintains 30 per cent of the domestic market, with imports maintaining a 70 per cent share,” R-CALF said in a statement.
Tom Bull and his family farm the famed Kinross Station property in NSW’s Riverina. Once a famous wool producer, Kinross has switched to premium lamb for export and Bull said tariffs “will really hurt us”.
His LambPro business ships up to 2000 lambs a week to the US and Bull said he would either have to take a hit, raise prices or send lamb to other markets.
“Other markets look more attractive now,” Bull said, citing Japan, China and Singapore as options.
Australian Farm Institute director Katie McRobert said China’s recent bans on Australian wine showed how disruptive tariffs could be, especially for livestock, which cannot be held back from sale until a new market opens, unlike steel and aluminium.
Local wine producers were effectively barred from the lucrative Chinese market in 2020. The local industry is still struggling and some businesses never recovered.
“China’s three-year tariffs on Australian wine were the nail in the coffin for some Australian producers. We’ve ended up with a huge wine glut and some southern growers have ripped out vines or left the industry as a result,” McRobert said.
“We can stockpile steel – we can’t stockpile a steer. Livestock producers have to make long-term decisions on stocking rates, feed regimes, breeding plans and pasture management.”
Vince Heffernan, who runs sheep on his property at Biala in southern NSW, said while he doesn’t export to the US, a tariff on lamb will be bad for business because more produce would likely remain in Australia and drive down prices.
“We have a pretty lean existence right now,” Heffernan warns.
Farm industry consultant Patrick Hutchison, of Gibraltar Strategic Advisory, said tariffs could initially blow a $400 million hole in beef exporter’s revenue, but the flow-on effects of retaliatory tariffs from other nations like China would upend the global supply chain and risk Australia’s other lucrative in Japan and Korea.
“If, for example, China starts hitting tariffs on American export product, what happens then is that the American beef will then say, well, I’m not going into China because I’m too expensive – how about I go over to Japan and Korea?”
The federal government has remained quiet on the prospect of agricultural tariffs, reluctant to poke the bear, but Albanese said the aluminium and steel tariffs are “against the spirit of our two nations’ enduring friendship” while Industry Minister Ed Husic called it a “dog act”.
Peak steel body the Australian Steel Institute said a 2024 survey of steel fabricators and manufacturers showed 86 per cent had reduced profit margins because of cheap imported fabricated steel.
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