After the Trump administration struck Australian steel and aluminium producers with a trade-ending 25 per cent tariff last month, a journalist cheekily asked Trade Minister Don Farrell, "Are we now in a position where China is a more reliable trade partner than the United States?"

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Australians won't quickly forget that in 2020 Beijing began punishing local farmers, fishers and miners to extract concessions from Canberra and make its policy settings more China-friendly.

After having no success, Beijing eventually backed down, but it was only in December last year that the final restrictions affecting live lobsters were removed.

No wonder then that Prime Minister Anthony Albanese offered a lukewarm response when Chinese ambassador, Xiao Qian, said last week that "China stands ready to join hands with Australia" in pushing back against the Trump administration's trade war.

Yet when Farrell responded to the earlier question, while diplomatically declining to weigh in on their relative reliability, he showed that the government is not blind to basic facts: "the Chinese economy for us is much, much bigger and much, much stronger than the United States economy".

In 2023-34, total exports to China stood at $213 billion, compared with just $38 billion to the US.

Another fact is that thanks to the China-Australia free trade agreement sealed in 2015, the average trade-weighted tariff China places on Australian goods is just 1 per cent.

Meanwhile, as of two weeks ago, exporters to the US have faced a tariff wall of nearly 10 times that level.

Whoever wins government on May 3 will need to remain focused on these facts in the months that follow.

Last week, US Treasury secretary Scott Bessent had already flagged a US-led economic coalition........

© Canberra Times