Australian trade minister hopeful about local exports exempt from new U.S. tariffs

CANBERRA, March 2 (Xinhua) -- Australian Trade Minister Steven Ciobo said he is hopeful that U.S. tariffs on steel and aluminium imports will not apply to Australian goods.

U.S. President Donald Trump announced sweeping tariffs on Thursday, including a 25 percent tariff on steel being exported to the U.S. and a 10-percent tariff on aluminium.

The move has threatened the future of the 232.5 million Australian dollars (180.6 million U.S. dollars) of Australian steel and aluminium exported to the U.S. every year.

Ciobo said that he had received assurances from the U.S. administration that an exemption from the tariffs would be applied to Australian products at the G20 Summit in Hamburg in 2017.

However, Trump made no reference of any exemptions when announcing the tariffs.

"I have expressed strongly the desire that there be an exemption," Ciobo told News Corp Australia on Friday.

"However, if the U.S. administration decides to, for example, apply global quotas, then that should treat Australia appropriately to ensure our industries, which account for a small percentage of the market, can operate unaffected."

Despite the announcement casting uncertainty on the future of Australian steel and aluminium exports, shares in BlueScope Steel Limited, the sole Australian exporter of steel to the U.S., were up 1.2 percent on the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) at midday on Friday.

During an official visit to the U.S. in late February, Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said he had made a "compelling case" for Australia to be exempt from the tariffs.

"We've made a very strong case for the Australian exports of steel and aluminium," Turnbull said in Washington.

"The BlueScope business alone employs 3,000 people in the United States. The President and I have discussed that." Enditem