What’s next for tariffs? Trump’s beef with Australia could threaten our biggest US export
His LambPro business ships up to 2000 lambs a week to the US and Bull said he would either have to take a hit, raise prices or send lamb to other markets.
“Other markets look more attractive now,” Bull said, citing Japan, China and Singapore as options.
Australian Farm Institute director Katie McRobert said China’s recent bans on Australian wine showed how disruptive tariffs could be, especially for livestock, which cannot be held back from sale until a new market opens, unlike steel and aluminium.
Local wine producers were effectively barred from the lucrative Chinese market in 2020. The local industry is still struggling and some businesses never recovered.
“China’s three-year tariffs on Australian wine were the nail in the coffin for some Australian producers. We’ve ended up with a huge wine glut and some southern growers have ripped out vines or left the industry as a result,” McRobert said.
“We can stockpile steel – we can’t stockpile a steer. Livestock producers have to make long-term decisions on stocking rates, feed regimes, breeding plans and pasture management.”
Vince Heffernan, who runs sheep on his property at Cooma in southern NSW, said while he doesn’t export to the US, a tariff on lamb will be bad for business because more produce would likely remain in Australia and drive down prices.
“We have a pretty lean existence right now,” Heffernan warns.
Farm industry consultant Patrick Hutchison, of Gibraltar Strategic Advisory, said tariffs could initially blow a $400 million hole in beef exporter’s revenue, but the flow-on effects of retaliatory tariffs from other nations like China would upend the global supply chain and risk Australia’s other lucrative in Japan and Korea.
“If, for example, China starts hitting tariffs on American export product, what happens then is that the American beef will then say, well, I’m not going into China because I’m too expensive – how about I go over to Japan and Korea?”
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The federal government has remained quiet on the prospect of agricultural tariffs, no doubt reluctant to poke the bear, but Albanese said the aluminium and steel tariffs are “against the spirit of our two nations’ enduring friendship” while Industry Minister Ed Husic called it a “dog act”.
Peak steel body the Australian Steel Institute said a 2024 survey of steel fabricators and manufacturers showed 86 per cent had reduced profit margins because of cheap imported fabricated steel, which is priced up to 50 per cent lower than local products.
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