ASI executive director Peter Orwick.

AN American sheep industry leader expects Australia will need to address lamb and beef import issues together for its response to United States President Trump’s 10 percent tariff to be “significant for consideration.”

The American Sheep Industry Association has welcomed President Trump’s decision, but has also suggested the proposed 10pc tariff on Australian and New Zealand lamb imports could be reviewed if import volumes are not curbed sufficiently.

ASI executive director Peter Orwick said the US is the highest value and most open market for lamb in the world.

“I anticipate that the AU response to the White House will include lamb as well as beef to be considered significant for consideration.”

ASI president Ben Lehfeldt said the 10pc tariff “is a good first step and we welcome the opportunity the president has provided to gauge if that level of ad valorem tariff is sufficient to curb the surge of frozen lamb unloading at American ports.”

“Our main competitors flooded the US market by an additional 30 percent in 2024.

“Predatory imports must be countered with every tool in the toolbox,” he said.

Mr Lehfeldt said ASI contacted all of the American lamb meat companies throughout March asking for business data to evaluate filing a formal trade case.

“We plan to continue that path while monitoring the trade reaction to President Trump’s reciprocal tariff implementation.”

The ASI said the disadvantage American sheep producers find themselves in while competing against products imported into the United States is exactly the type of problem President Trump was looking to solve on what he referred to as Liberation Day.

Are solutions to the US lamb and beef tariff available?

Australia’s Trade minister Don Farrell said Australia would continue to engage with the US to seek to remove the unfair tariffs on Australian goods and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has said the nation would not weaken biosecurity measures that protect our farmers from disease or contamination risks.

Although Australia suspended imports of US beef in 2003 when BSE or Mad Cow Disease was discovered in the US herd, imports of fresh US beef from cattle born and raised in the US are allowed. However, the US has also asked for access to Australia for beef from cattle raised in Mexico or Canada and processed and exported from the US. This revised request is undergoing normal Australian science-based assessment to protect biosecurity.

Global AgriTrends analyst Simon Quilty said he is expecting Australian lamb kills to tighten significantly this year and this will lower exports to the US.

“I think we’ll be 3 million fewer lambs killed than last year – probably last year 26.5 million and we’ll be down to 23-23.5 million this year.

“So these issues go away anyway, because of less supply,” he said.

“So the volumes into America will decline and in the next year will decline even further as we go further into a (flock) rebuild.”

He said Australia’s lamb sector can live with the tariff of 10pc.

“And I think if a tightening of supply occurs out of Australia we are going to maintain our role there in America and in actual fact expect considerably higher prices as we move forward due to the lack of supply globally, but in particular out of Australia.”

Mr Quilty said the lift in mutton prices in saleyards recently is a signal that Australia is not far off from the flock rebuild commencing. Sheep reportedly sold for between 700-800 c/kg in Griffith today.

On the issue of US beef coming into Australia, Mr Quilty believes the issue will resolve itself pretty quickly.

“The core of the problem is that we are comfortable with (beef from) born and raised cattle in America, and the traceability of that

“Where the system has left some uncertainty for Australia is on Canada and Mexico.”

But Mr Quilty said there are now electronic tag traceability systems for Canadian cattle and a clip tag system for Mexican feeder steers coming into America for slaughter.

“So there is strong traceability out of Canada into America and on Mexico there has been strong traceability on the female feeders coming in and that has been in place for a number of years with what’s called their clip-tag.

“But in recent times they have also strengthened that traceability on male feeders coming in as well,” he said.

“Also since November last year the US has increased the strength of its traceability between states, because of the issue of the multistate outbreak of HPAI A (H5N1) bird flu in dairy cows.

“So that’s now flowed over into beef cattle in terms of traceability, not in terms of HPAI, and therefore overall there has been a strengthening of traceability across America both on animals that come from outside of America and from within America.”

Mr Quilty said previously no guarantee could be made on whether beef came from animals that originated in Canada or Mexico.

“The clear message is that all animals today have got traceability and that’s issued at the Mexican border.

“And on top of that they do hot branding on those animals as well as they come over the border, should there be any loss of tags.”

Mr Quilty believed these measures should allay Australia’s fears about accepting US beef imports.

“I think it goes a long way to alleviating some of the concerns that we’ve had on biosecurity with North America and therefore I firmly believe even if US beef was given access to Australia that the volume that would be sent here would be inconsequential because of price differences that exist today.

“I actually trade that meat into Australia back in the 90s and it was always a small window of two months a year that saw very small volumes come in – less than a thousand metric tonnes,” he said.

“The message is very clear to me that the biosecurity risk with North America is minimal, but the biosecurity risk north of us in Indonesia is large and that’s where our focus should be, not on North America.”

He said allowing US beef into Australia would be a good starting point to argue for removal of the US tariff from beef and lamb.

“Once US beef is officially allowed into Australia, and given that Donald Trump used it as part of his Liberation Day address, and the fact that we can give up ground on that, the result is that it could lead to substantial gains, because the risk is so small.

“The ability to show that we are willing to move and that it was used as a tariff case example means that it could actually work very much in favour in removing the 10pc.”

He said the fact that Australia is moving into a period of lower lamb supply would dovetail into the case to remove the tariff.

Trump says tariff deal offers will need to be phenomenal

Mr Orwick’s statement that Australia’s tariff response would need to include beef and sheep to be considered significant came as president Trump was quoted as saying he was open to tariff cuts if a country’s offer was “so phenomenal.”

“Well it depends, if somebody said that we are going to give you something that is so phenomenal, as long as they are giving us something that’s good,” Mr Trump said.

When presented with Mr Trump’s comments in Sydney today, Mr Albanese said Australia would “probably not make a phenomenal offer at a press conference.”

“But we’ll engage diplomatically in a considered way; that is what serious governments do.

“Serious governments engage government to government, that is what we have been doing.”

Mr Albanese said he was very confident of the measures the government had put forward since the tariffs were announced.

“The first of which I said yesterday was our anti-dumping regime, that is a risk.

“I’ve spoken to the head of the NFF about our $50 million for sectors to be able to engage with new markets, including missions to overseas,” he said.

“We will have an economic resilience program through our national reconstruction fund.

“We’ve got our Buy Australian plan and of course the Critical Minerals Strategic Reserve.”