Australia’s Trade Minister dismisses calls for talks with Trump over tariffs

Australian agriculture and pharmaceutical products could be the next victims of Donald Trump’s tariffs according to Trade Minister Don Farrell, but he has insisted there’s no need to “panic”.

Mr Farrell was in Fremantle on Thursday, holding WA rock lobsters recently spared from Chinese tariffs and celebrating a surge in tourism bookings from China.

Asked whether he should instead by flying to Washington for urgent talks Mr Farrell said “no”.

“We’ll continue the discussions but we’re not going to panic,” he said.

“We’re not going to panic, we didn’t panic in the relationship with China. We were cool, calm and collected and that’s the way we’re going to be in our relationship with the United States and every other country.”

He revealed that he will be speaking to American trade representatives on Sunday and said it was clear Mr Trump was not going to give any country an exemption from the 25 per cent tariffs on aluminium and steel imports.

But Mr Farrell denied the Albanese government has given up.

“No, no we haven’t given up trying. There’s another round of tariff impacts starting the first of April, we’ll be talking with our American counterparts to try and convince them that they’re heading in the wrong direction,” he said.

Mr Farrell added: “Our total trade with the United States, two-way trade, is about $100 billion. That’s less than a third of what we do with China.”

“We buy $70 billion worth of products from America , (we) sell them $30 billion, so our trade with China has always been much greater than the US,” he said.

“I think the United States have done a great act of self harm by imposing these tariffs.”