Perspective with Heather duPlessis-Allan: Was our government too relaxed about the tariffs?

So, was our government too relaxed about the tariffs then?  

Cause this is a shock today – isn't it? To find out that we’ve just been bumped up to 15% while Australia and dozens of other countries have stayed on 10%. 

Now, it seems to be related, most likely, to our balance of trade and that the US has a trade deficit with us. So we get 15%, but then a trade surplus with Australia, so they get 10%. So perhaps it was inevitable and unavoidable, as long as the balance of trade sat like that. 

But then, on the other hand, Australia did kind of lock that in as well. They lifted their ban on US beef imports while we did nothing. Should we have done something similar Because if there's one thing that we know about Donald Trump, it's that he's a trader. 

South Korea had their tariff dropped from 25% to 15% by promising to buy $100 million worth of LNG. Sir Keir Starmer sucked up to Trump with a letter from King Charles.  

Now we don’t actually know what our diplomats were doing, because they were fairly guarded about it. But the vibe that we kept getting from ministers and officials every time we asked about it was, ‘not a lot going on, we’ll see how this goes, we’re on 10%, we’re no worse than anyone else’ 

That’s the trouble, though. We are now worse than other people. We export beef to the US, Australia exports beef to the US. Their beef now gets 10%, ours gets 15%. 

Now, we can argue about whether US consumers are really going to switch up their $11.50 New Zealand steak if the Aussie steak is only 50 cents cheaper. I mean, what's really the difference between $11.50 and $11? But I chose a butter last night because it was $1 cheaper than the other butter, so maybe they will, which brings me to the question that I asked at the start of this. 

Were we too relaxed? 

Because we definitely and quite deliberately opted for Winston's head below the parapet approach. But maybe what we should have done was opted for the same approach that Albanese and Starmer took, which is to suck up instead. Given where we are and where they are - both their countries are now on 10% and we're sitting on 15%. 

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