Australian prime minister says he discussed tariffs and AUKUS security partnership in call with US president.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has said he had a “warm” conversation with United States President Donald Trump about trade and other issues after his Labor Party’s decisive election win over the weekend.
Speaking to the media in Canberra on Monday, Albanese said the two leaders discussed tariffs and the AUKUS nuclear submarine partnership in a congratulatory phone call made by the US president.
“It was a very warm discussion about the friendship between our two nations that’s so important,” Albanese said.
“I have had three conversations with the president. I won’t go into all the personal comments that he made, but it was very generous in his personal warmth and praise toward myself. He was fully aware of the outcome, and he expressed the desire to continue to work with me in the future.”
Albanese made the comments after securing a thumping win in Saturday’s federal election, which was dominated by cost-of-living concerns and the spectre of Trump’s trade war.
Albanese’s centre-left Labor far outperformed expectations after running behind the Liberal Party-National Party Coalition, led by former police officer Peter Dutton, for much of the year, taking at least 85 seats in the 151-member House of Representatives.
Dutton, whom critics accused of channelling Trump’s populist style, and his Coalition suffered an electoral wipeout, with partial results showing it ahead in just 40 seats.
Australia, one of the closest US allies, has been slapped with a 10 percent tariff as part of Trump’s so-called “reciprocal” duties on dozens of trade partners.
While Trump has paused most of his double-digit tariffs until July, his administration has been collecting a baseline tariff of 10 percent on almost all imports since early April.
Albanese at the time slammed Trump’s tariff as “unwarranted”, saying the move was “not the act of a friend”.