The Guardian

Australia news live: Butler says government ‘deeply disappointed’ by Trump’s tariff exemption refusal but will ‘continue to press the case’


The federal government says it remains in discussion with the Trump administration, and will have ‘more to say’ on the matter soon. Follow today’s news live

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Butler said the US tariff decision was “bad for our relationship” when asked whether it had a damaging effect on international relations on ABC News Breakfast a short while ago.

The federal health minister also said it was a bad economic decision:

This is a disappointing decision. It’s a bad economic decision. It’s bad for our relationship. It’s bad for the US, ultimately, because we think that the exports we send to them – which are significantly less than the exports they send to us – are good for the US economy. They’re good for US industry. They’re particularly good for defence, which is an important area of cooperation. We think this is a bad decision that’s disappointing, and we’ll continue to press the case for it.

We’ve only been going at this for almost seven weeks that President Trump has been back in office. We intend to continue to press the case at the highest level – particularly ambassador Rudd has been relentless in this, meeting with officials almost constantly to press the American case. We’ve had a lot of senior ministerial engagement.

Obviously the prime minister has spoken directly with the president. We’ll continue to do that. It’s not only in Australia’s interest – which for us, is the most important thing – we’re confident, we’re very sure it’s in both of our interests’ interest to continue the open trade that has characterised particularly the last 20 years under the US FTA.

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Source link : https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/live/2025/mar/12/australia-news-live-beach-erosion-election-labor-coalition-poll-anthony-albanese-peter-dutton-ntwnfb

Author : Rafqa Touma

Publish date : 2025-03-11 21:17:00

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