National Ag News Editor Andrew Norris speaks with host Kirsten Diprose about the impact of President Donald Trump's election in the US on Australian agriculture.
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00:00Hello and welcome to AgriCast, Kirsten Dippro is here with you and we're taking a look at
00:12one of the biggest stories across the ACM Agri network and to do that with us is Andrew
00:17Norris.
00:18Hi, Andrew.
00:19Hi, Kirsten.
00:20How are you going?
00:21Good, thanks.
00:22Now, you are the National News Editor at ACM Agri.
00:25Running the news headlines, I think, across the board has been the US election.
00:30But what does that mean for us in the agriculture community?
00:34I mean, Trump has promised to impose new tariffs on imports.
00:38What does that mean for farmers?
00:40As seen under Trump previously, he exempted Australian red meat due to the FTA that we
00:47have in place.
00:49And I think the expectation is that along with things like high demand for red meat
00:55and also in the context of how they'll be managing their cost of living situation as
01:01well and red meat seen as an important part of that, I think things are looking reasonably
01:07favourable there in terms of how those exports continue.
01:11The US has been quite reliant on sheep and red meat in general from Australia with the
01:16drought there.
01:18What sort of tariffs are they thinking they might impose?
01:21The broad numbers have been anything from 10 to 60 per cent, 60 per cent is more sort
01:27of what it's talking about.
01:28It'll slap on a lot of Chinese imports.
01:30I suppose Australia would come in the bracket more towards the 10 per cent end.
01:35How serious are the concerns about a trade war between the US and China?
01:40And if we do see one, what does that mean for us in Australia?
01:44The grains market's probably an interesting area to look at there.
01:47Obviously, we don't export huge amounts of grain to the US, but if a trade war does intensify,
01:54then there's scope for other countries to bring in more protectionist measures which
01:59could impact our exports.
02:01And some other things that particularly our grains writer, Gregor Hurd, has taken a look
02:05at is things like ingredients for farm chemicals used to grow grains, fertilisers, cost of
02:12fuel, particularly interactions between China, the US, the Middle East, and where we get
02:18stuck in the middle of all that, and how that could affect just the cost of doing business
02:22for farmers.
02:24Another one to watch with the US has been Robert F. Kennedy, who is likely to play a
02:29big role in the next Trump administration.
02:32And he's spoken out against a number of common chemicals that are used in farming.
02:38What are the implications of the use of chemicals, I suppose, in the US?
02:43And then what does that mean for us globally?
02:46There's a very strong farm lobby in the US, and I think one person in the US government
02:52is going to have a lot of trouble making any significantly drastic changes to what farmers
02:57can or can't do.
02:58So if you're a farmer watching the markets now and watching US, what do you do?
03:04That's a million dollar question, isn't it?
03:05I think a lot of farmers are pretty pragmatic and focus on the things they can control.
03:11And I don't think things like Trump are hurting the cattle market, along with the expectations
03:17around supply over there, and the fact that we have record export volumes at the moment
03:23overall, particularly in the beef sector.
03:25There's a few factors there aligning market-wise that probably give people, certainly in the
03:32red meat markets, more reasons to maybe be positive than negative right now too.
03:37Well, that's a good way to end it.
03:39Andrew Norris, thank you so much for joining us on AgriCast.