‘Fig leaf’ tariffs blasted as US fires fresh tax salvo

Zac de Silva | June 4, 2026

Donald Trump has reignited his tariff war with the world, planning new levies on 60 countries including a 12.5 per cent import tax on Australian goods.

Some of America’s closest allies are covered by the latest tariff salvo, which the White House says is in response to lax anti-slavery laws.

The move, which is widely seen as a response to a Supreme Court ruling which struck down Mr Trump’s original “Liberation Day” tariffs, has been condemned by Australia’s political leaders.

The Trump administration highlighted the “failure of our most important trading partners to address the importation of goods made with forced labour”.

“We will no longer tolerate this disparity,” US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said in a statement.

Treasurer Jim Chalmers disputed the claim, saying Australia’s modern slavery laws were world-leading.

“We maintain the position that these tariffs are unwarranted, they’re unjustified, and they’re inconsistent with our free-trade agreement with the US,” he told reporters outside Parliament House on Thursday.

“We’ve got world-leading legislation in place already to combat the evils of modern slavery.”

There are two tiers of tariffs – a 12.5 per cent levy on 54 nations the US believes have poor anti-slavery laws, and a 10 per cent levy on six countries the White House thinks are not enforcing the laws properly.

If approved, the changes are expected to take effect on July 24 when an existing blanket 10 per cent import tax expires.

Other American allies, including Canada, Israel, Japan, New Zealand and the European Union, along with adversaries such as China and Russia, are also covered under the latest tariff ruling.

The tariffs were unwarranted and would only push up prices for US consumers, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said.

“There is an ideological disagreement where the United States administration has broken with what was a decades-long understanding that tariffs are not positive for the country that is imposing them,” he told the ABC’s AM program.

Trade Minister Don Farrell spoke with Mr Greer on the sidelines of the OECD ministerial meeting being held in Paris to push back against the import taxes.

Beef and gold from Australia will maintain their existing exemptions from US tariffs, AAP understands.

The tariffs would hurt American consumers and Australian exporters financially, UTS professor and former Austrade chief economist Tim Harcourt said.

“It’s almost like putting rocks in your own harbour, in a sense,” he told AAP.

Mr Harcourt, who also previously worked with the union movement, said it was rare for Australia’s generally high labour standards to be questioned.

Nationals leader Matt Canavan said the White House’s justification for the tariffs on anti-slavery grounds was a “fig leaf”.

“Just weeks after the US Supreme Court struck out the Trump administration’s first tariffs, the US launched an investigation of whether Australia fails to impose and effectively enforce a prohibition on the importation of goods produced with forced labour,” he said in a statement.

“Its report is a smokescreen to justify tariffs it clearly intended to put on in any case.”

Opposition Leader Angus Taylor blasted the “rotten” tariffs.

“There shouldn’t be tariffs like this imposed on Australia, and the United States shouldn’t do it… we fought with them in every war, every major war, they shouldn’t be imposing tariffs on us,” he said.

Former Australian ambassador to the US Joe Hockey said he’d argued personally with Mr Trump about his tariff policies and warned he was “not for moving”.

“America is running out of money, and they need to get it from somewhere,” he told ABC Radio.

“The president of the United States is convinced that foreigners pay tariffs imposed by America, whereas in fact it is American consumers that pay higher prices.”