CSIS international relations expert Charles Edel delivers Trump tariff warning

A leading expert in international relations has warned that Australian policymakers will need to court US President-elect Donald Trump directly to avoid punishing tariffs from the world’s largest economy.

Center for Strategic and International Studies Australia chair Charles Edel, speaking with ABC Insiders on Sunday, said it was not clear whether Australia could avoid the imposition of tariffs in President Trump’s second administration, though Australia was in a more favourable position than other Asia-Pacific nations such as China.

“It (Australia) has a trade deficit with the US,” he said.

“For reasons that only Donald Trump knows, this matters enormously to him.

“But … Donald Trump has to hear the case directly from Australia.

“It’s why personal relationships matter a lot.

“The fact that Australia runs a deficit with the US should be a pretty good argument for their case but they have to make that case with facts and figures directly to Trump himself.”

A tariff is a tax on imported goods, and if the US imposed a tariff on Australian goods, it would degrade Australia’s export-dependent economy, and possibly lead to domestic job losses.

Mr Trump has threatened to impose an across-the-board 20 per cent tariff on all imported goods, with a potentially higher rate for competitor nations such as China.

“Trump has said he is ‘tariff man’,” Mr Edel said.

“He loves tariffs. It is the tool he reaches to for just about everything.”

Mr Trump argues tariffs would boost America’s domestic manufacturing capacity.

Mr Edel also warned previous disparaging remarks about President Trump from Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and current Ambassador to the US Kevin Rudd “might” colour their interactions with the mercurial leader moving forward.

“It depends how Trump reacts and it’s very hard to predict how he reacts in the middle in the night,” he said.

But Mr Edel argued what someone had said about Mr Trump in the past was often less important than what was said about him in the present and future, noting President Trump’s vice president, JD Vance, had previously referred to him as “moral disaster”.

“‘What have you done for me today?’ is I think how Donald Trump sees the world,” Mr Edel said.

Mr Edel also said it was unclear how a second Trump administration would assess the AUKUS agreement between the US, Australia and the UK.

“I think we don’t know, if we’re going to be honest,” he said.

“He (President Trump) will be a deciding factor on this. It depends how well Aus can prosecute its case to Trump.”

Under AUKUS, Australia will acquire conventionally-armed, nuclear powered submarines, with the Australian government set to shell out up to $368bn in the next three decades to get them.