By Kirsty Needham
SYDNEY (Reuters) -Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said he told U.S. President-elect Donald Trump the United States has a trade surplus with Australia and it was in Washington’s interest to “trade fairly” with its ally, while the defence minister highlighted Australia’s record spending on security.
Trump has proposed a 10% tariff on all U.S. imports and a 60% levy on Chinese-made products. In the past, Trump has criticised European members of NATO for spending too little on defence.
Giving detail of last week’s phone call with Trump, Albanese said in a radio interview on Wednesday he had raised the issue of trade with Trump.
“The United States has a trade surplus with Australia, so it is in the United States’ interests to trade fairly with Australia,” he said in an interview with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
Under the first Trump presidency, Australia won an exemption from U.S. tariffs for its aluminium and steel exports.
The United States is a major security ally of Australia, and the U.S. is selling nuclear-powered submarines to Australia under the AUKUS partnership. A rotating force of marines are hosted in the northern city of Darwin, where air bases are being upgraded to cater for U.S. bomber aircraft.
U.S. Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin will meet with his Australian and Japanese counterparts in Darwin this weekend, U.S. officials in Australia said.
Trump said on Tuesday he has picked as his secretary of defense Pete Hegseth, a Fox News commentator and veteran.
Defence Minister Richard Marles said in an interview with Sky News Australia, which like Fox is owned by News Corporation, he had not met Hegseth and congratulated him on the “hugely significant role”.
“I really look forward to the opportunity of meeting Pete Hegseth and of working closely with him, as I have with Lloyd Austin, who I’ll be seeing later this week,” he said.
“So much of the way in which our relationship, our full bilateral relationship between Australia and America plays out happens through the prism of defence,” he added.
Australia had committed to “historic levels of increased defence spending” with A$50 billion ($32.69 billion) of additional spending over the decade, he said.
Albanese, who will travel to the APEC and G20 summits in Peru and Brazil over the next few days, said his focus was on “free and fair trade”, amid strategic competition between the United States and China.
“We think that we can play a role as a middle power … we of course have an alliance with the United States, but China is our major trading partner,” he said.
China is Australia’s largest export market, with trade dominated by iron ore, gas and coal.
($1 = 1.5298 Australian dollars)