The United States is working to exempt ally Australia from its newly unveiled foreign steel and aluminium tariffs, President Donald Trump said on Saturday, tying the effort to a security agreement.<\/p>\n
Major US trading partners have condemned Trump\u2019s decision to impose the punitive tariffs as protectionism and an affront to allies, amid growing fears of a global trade war.<\/p>\n
After a telephone conversation with Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, Trump said the Australian leader \u201cis committed to having a very fair and reciprocal military and trade relationship.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWorking very quickly on a security agreement so we don\u2019t have to impose steel or aluminium tariffs on our ally, the great nation of Australia!\u201d the American president added.<\/p>\n
There were no immediate details on what such a \u201csecurity agreement\u201d would entail.<\/p>\n
Australia and the United States have been joined in the ANZUS Treaty security alliance since it took effect in 1952.<\/p>\n
Turnbull told reporters that Trump \u201cwas able to confirm that he would not have to impose tariffs on Australian steel and aluminium,\u201d and that now the paperwork will be done \u201cto put that direction into effect.\u201d<\/p>\n
Australian steel and aluminium account for just a small percentage of the US import market, but Canberra has warned the tariffs would distort trade and lead to job losses.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat was a very good and productive discussion with the president,\u201d Turnbull said.<\/p>\n
Trump had indicated he would be flexible toward \u201creal friends.\u201d<\/p>\n
During yesterday\u2019s signing of the tariffs, 25 per cent on imported steel and 10 per cent on aluminium, he confirmed Canada and Mexico would be exempted permanently if the ongoing renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement is successful.<\/p>\n
But both Mexico and Canada rejected Trump\u2019s linkage of the levies to ongoing NAFTA talks.<\/p>\n
The US leader had also added Australia to a list of likely exemptions.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have a very close relationship with Australia, we have a trade surplus with Australia, great country, long-term partner, we\u2019ll be doing something with them,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
But Trump took aim at Germany — the biggest economy in the European Union trade bloc — as a bad actor likely to face tariffs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The United States is working to exempt ally Australia from its newly unveiled foreign steel and aluminium tariffs, President Donald Trump said on Saturday, tying the effort to a security agreement. Major US trading partners have condemned Trump\u2019s decision to impose the punitive tariffs as protectionism and an affront to allies, amid growing fears of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":24389,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24388","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24388","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24388"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24388\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24390,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24388\/revisions\/24390"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24389"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24388"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24388"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24388"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}