Overnight, US President Donald Trump announced a deal with Vietnam which reduces the Southeast Asian economy’s threatened blanket 46% tariff duty to 20%, in exchange for dropping levies on all US imports to the country.
It’s an example of a success in Trump’s Art of the Deal approach to international trade diplomacy: come in hot with a big opening offer, and whittle it down to something marginally less insane through negotiation.
Australia, on the other hand, was not subject to quite as extreme an opening gambit. We received the 10% minimum tariff threat, as low as anyone in the world.
As Finn McHugh wrote yesterday, Commonwealth Bank chief economist Luke Yeaman thinks that’s a pretty decent deal already, and we’re unlikely to do much better — whether or not Anthony Albanese lands his hotly watched meeting with Trump or not.
