By Kat Wong in Canberra
AUSTRALIAN pharmaceutical companies will not be directly hit by Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs.
Last week, the President unveiled 10 per cent tariffs on all Australian goods sent to the US as part his “Liberation Day” announcements.
But the nation’s pharmaceutical industry representative Medicines Australia has received confirmation there will be no tariffs on Australian pharmaceuticals exported to the US.
Mr Trump’s executive order hinted that pharmaceuticals, alongside copper, semiconductors, timber and critical minerals could be exempt from the levies, although the Australian sector did not receive official confirmation until Thursday afternoon.
The carve-out will come as a relief after speculation that a pharmaceutical tariff could undermine Australia’s medicine subsidy scheme.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese earlier maintained the broader tariffs were “totally unwarranted”.
“The administration’s tariffs have no basis in logic and they go against the basis of our two nations’ partnership,” he told reporters in Melbourne.
“This is not the act of a friend.”
Tariff levels varied depending on the country, and while most were around 25 per cent, Australia has been hit less hard, with its rates resting on the baseline.
Mr Trump slapped the same tariffs on the Heard and McDonald Islands, a barren and uninhabited Australian external territory in the Indian Ocean, and on Christmas Island, the former home to Australia’s offshore immigration detention centres.
But Norfolk Island, another Australian territory in the Pacific Ocean, has been slugged with a 29 per cent tariff even though it largely exports about $400,000 in leather shoes, $250,000 in seeds, and $175,000 in vehicle parts.
During his White House speech, Mr Trump singled out Australian beef partly because the Government has banned imports of various American produce including raw pork, pears and apples, to prevent contamination and diseases.
Uncooked American beef, in particular, has been barred since a mad cow disease outbreak in 2003.
“Australians … they’re wonderful people, wonderful everything, but they ban American beef,” Mr Trump said at the White House.
“Yet we imported $US3 billion ($A4.8 billion) of Australian beef from them just last year alone.
“They won’t take any of our beef, they don’t want it because they don’t want it to affect their farmers.”
Ironically, US consumers could be among the worst hit by the tariffs.
