Really, it’s a wonder the NSW government bothered to spend $16 million bringing UFC to Sydney, when comparable thrills are offered — at no extra charge — by our new mano-a-mano cage sport: Trade negotiations with our closest allies.
Yesterday’s bare-knuckle telephone encounter between plucky working-class scrapper Anthony Albanese and flame-haired Floridian ex-retiree Donald Trump enjoyed hysterical parliamentary pre-sizzle on Monday, to a degree not seen since Tony Abbott vowed to “shirt-front” Russian president Vladimir Putin in 2014.
In the red corner: Mr Albanese, vowing to emerge from the encounter with Australian steel exports intact.
In the blue corner: Peter Dutton, also officially Team Aussie Steel but moving with the loose-limbed assurance that comes to a man with a politically lucrative side-bet on Albo and Kevin getting creamed by The Orange One.
Game on!!!
Yesterday’s papers hyped the clash. Students of the form recalled the 2017 steel-tariffs bout in which Point Piper pugilist Malcolm Turnbull got the better of Trump.
Could the Aussies make it two for two in Copacabana v Mar-A-Lago: Beach House Meets White House?
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Real-time deal-making
Gone are the days in which trade matters were settled by swarms of nerds armed with lever-arch folders bulging with actual trade data. Gone is the complicated interpretive dance of diplomatic communiques, with its shy euphemisms (“Cordial” means “nothing whatsoever was decided”. “Respectful” means “There was shouting.” And “Frank” means “a violent brawl ensued in which the Second Assistant Secretary was near-fatally shivved with a broken Perrier bottle”).
This is real-time deal-making, in the Trump reality era, where reality is a subjective construct.
When a relaxed-looking Mr Albanese emerged post-bout, it was to report a negotiated draw: Not a bad result at all,
The pair had agreed to say that an exemption for Australian steel was “under consideration”.
But wait — what? Barely an hour elapsed before Mr Trump popped up live in the Oval Office, signing a new brace of executive orders to which the president supplied his own commentary.
An order gutting the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (which does pretty much what you think it does). A full pardon for Rod Blagojevich, a former The Apprentice contestant who was convicted of corruption in 2011. “Bad people,” declared the president of Mr Blagojevic’s tormentors. An order restoring plastic straws to US government agencies. “As you’ve consistently identified, nobody really likes paper straws,” offered White House staff secretary Will Scharf supportively as he handed the order to Mr Trump, who confirmed the sentiment with a compact nod and a flourish of his Sharpie. “They explode,” he added.
Next came the order for a 25 per cent tariff on imported steel. “It’s 25 per cent, without exceptions or exemptions,” the President declared.
After some congratulatory remarks, largely self-administered, Mr Trump was asked if it was true he’d just told the Australian prime minister he was considering an exemption for Australian steel.
“I just spoke to him! Very fine man,” said Mr Trump, with — perhaps? — the slightly elevated enthusiasm of a man who cannot quite recall the exact name of the guy with whom he just had a 40-minute phone call about steel. “I told him that that’s something that we’ll give great consideration to”.
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Planes bulldozed by the numbers
What happened next gives you some idea of just how dicey it must be to negotiate any sort of detail with the 47th President.
“We have a surplus with Australia, one of the few,” Mr Trump explained.
“And the reason is they buy a lot of airplanes. They’re rather far away and they need lots of airplanes.”
Now, the first thing is true: The United States does enjoy a rare trade surplus with Australia, a factor on which the Turnbull government leaned heavily in 2017. According to Trading Economics, we spent $31.3 billion on American stuff in 2023, while sending Australian stuff worth just $12.59 billion the other way.
And yes, Australia is “far away”, though only if you’re starting out from America.
But planes aren’t particularly near the top of the list of stuff we import.
“Aircraft and spacecraft” accounted for $698 million of our US imports in 2023. Which is a lot, but not as much, for example, as we spent on self-propelled bulldozers, which was $804 million.
We only sent $11 million worth of bulldozers back the other way, which means that Australia has a hefty self-propelled bulldozer deficit with the United States, even if you leave some wiggle room to account for the times when Scott Morrison visits Mar-A-Lago.
But planes? Where did that idea come from? We import more pharmaceuticals ($2.47 billion) than planes. We import more gold ($1.6 billion) than planes. We import more “human or animal blood, vaccines, toxins, antisera” ($1.25 billion) than planes.
Trump and then prime minister Malcolm Turnbull in 2018. (Reuters: Jonathan Ernst)
Surprises are the standard
Mr Albanese was customarily discreet about the detail of his discussion with the American president. But you get a sense of the challenge. How much of the chat was about planes? Did Mr Albanese need to politely pretend that we buy lots of planes? Will we need to keep mentioning planes in future? Should we buy some planes just to make sure?
A glance at Mr Turnbull’s account of his 2017 steel negotiations — published in his memoir — confirms that the path to agreement was similarly strewn with surprises.
Unlike Mr Albanese, Mr Turnbull had had several encounters with Mr Trump by the time steel came up, one of which — regarding Mr Trump’s acceptance of Syrian refugees from Australia — famously got quite tense indeed.
And the final agreement to an exemption from steel tariffs finally came in June 2017 when Mr Turnbull found himself crammed inside (ironically) a steel secure shipping container on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Hamburg in June 2017, accompanied by finance minister Mathias Cormann, the US President and his retinue, plus UK prime minister Theresa May and French president Emmanuel Macron.
Mr Turnbull wanted to talk about steel. Mr Trump wanted to talk about Kerry Packer. “Emmanuel, do you know Malcolm is the best lawyer in the world? He kept my friend Kerry Packer out of jail.”
“Oh, Donald, it wasn’t that hard,” replied Mr Turnbull.
“No, he was so guilty. Deserved to go to jail for ever!” responded the US president.
Even allowing for the fact that this is Mr Turnbull’s own account, you can sense the scale of the task at hand. Eventually, the pair bonded over Colourbond, which Mr Trump had once used in a New York construction project, and the mission was accomplished.
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‘Man of Steel’
Steel has been a recurrent theme in leader-to-leader relations with the USA for more than two decades now; the 43rd US president George W Bush welcomed John Howard as a guest to his Texan ranch in late 2003 and bestowed upon the Australian PM the nickname “Man Of Steel”.
“I can’t tell you what a comfort it is to talk to him on the phone,” said Mr Bush, tenderly, of Mr Howard.
“He’s steady. It gets tough when you make tough decisions and we both made the tough decisions but there was never any doubt in his mind. He was steady under fire.”
The invasion of Iraq was — at that time — about six weeks old.
Mr Howard responded to Mr Bush’s words with commensurate warmth, praising the “leadership of the US”.
“I think the military textbooks will be replete with the experiences of Operation Iraqi Freedom for many years to come,” he said.
These events took place in the old days, when certain rules applied and the bromances between like-minded leaders were simple affairs, uncluttered by the sponsored presence of sprawling billionaires. Things still went wrong, obviously. But now? Unmistakably, we’ve arrived at a new plane of unreality.
