Anthony Albanese:

Indeed, Australians did show extraordinary resilience during the global pandemic, and we came through that – that had a long tail, that’s still having an impact today, and straight up to us, followed by inflation. Now President Trump has made a decision that I’ve called that an act of economic self harm for the United States, when you impose tariffs, it’s a tax on the country that is imposing it, so Americans will pay more for the goods that they purchase from overseas, and that will have an impact here, because we know that as the world’s largest economy, it’s expected to dampen global economic growth, so it does present a challenge.

But last Thursday, we were prepared.

Australia got the best deal of any country on the planet. 10% is 10% more than we would like. But no one got a better deal than us, in part, because of the representations that we’ve made, but we’re prepared as well.

No country is better positioned to take advantage of the trade opportunities. And it’s important to remember this, 80% of global trade doesn’t involve the United States, so in our region in particular, there will be opportunities for Australia that we want to seize.

We will have more global trade missions, following the missions that I’ve led to Indonesia, to India and China, looking for opportunities for businesses. We’ll create a fund, through our national reconstruction fund of a billion dollars to help businesses adjust here. We’ll continue to negotiate, of course, with the United States looking for a better deal for Australia, because reciprocal tariffs would, of course, be zero, because we don’t impose tariffs on US goods.