Latest / Best of Business / Perspective with Heather duPlessis-Allan: Was our government too relaxed about the tariffs?

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Perspective with Heather duPlessis-Allan: Was our government too relaxed about the tariffs? · Best of Business

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  Speaker 2: Heather do for seel So, was our government too relaxed
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  Speaker 2: about the tariffs then? Because this is a shock today,
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  Speaker 2: isn't it to find out that we've just been bumped
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  Speaker 2: up to fifteen percent while Australia and dozens and dozens
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  Speaker 2: and dozens and dozens of other countries have stayed on
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  Speaker 2: ten percent. Now it seems to be directly related, most
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  Speaker 2: likely to our balance of trade, and that the US
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  Speaker 2: has a trade deficit with US, so we get fifteen percent,
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  Speaker 2: but then a trade surplus with Australia so they get
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  Speaker 2: ten percent. So perhaps it was inevitable and unavoidable as
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  Speaker 2: long as the balance of trade sat like that. But
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  Speaker 2: then on the other hand, Australia did kind of lock
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  Speaker 2: that in as well. A they went out of their
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  Speaker 2: way they lifted their ban on US beef imports, while
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  Speaker 2: we did nothing. Should we have done something similar, because
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  Speaker 2: if there's one thing that we know about Donald trumpet
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  Speaker 2: said he's a trader. South Korea had their tariff drop
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  Speaker 2: from twenty five to fifteen percent by promising to buy
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  Speaker 2: one hundred million dollars worth of al ng Kee Istamus
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  Speaker 2: sucked up to Trump with a letter from King Charles.
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  Speaker 2: Now we don't actually know we did nothing like that.
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  Speaker 2: By the way, we don't actually know what our diplomats
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  Speaker 2: were doing because they were fairly guarded about it. But
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  Speaker 2: the vibe that we kept getting from ministers and officials
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  Speaker 2: every time we asked about it was, look, not a
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  Speaker 2: lot going on. We're just waiting to see how this goes.
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  Speaker 2: We're on ten percent. We're no worse than anybody else.
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  Speaker 2: That's the trouble, though we are now worse than other people.
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  Speaker 2: We export beef to the US. Australia exports beef to
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  Speaker 2: the US. They're beef now cops ten percent, our beef
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  Speaker 2: cops fifteen percent. Now we can argue about where the
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  Speaker 2: US consumers are really going to switch up there At
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  Speaker 2: eleven dollar fifty New New Zealand steak, if the Aussie
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  Speaker 2: steak is only fifty cents cheaper, I mean, what's really
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  Speaker 2: the difference between eleven fifty and eleven but I chose
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  Speaker 2: a butter last night because it was a dollar cheaper
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  Speaker 2: than the other butter, So maybe they will, which brings
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  Speaker 2: me to the question that I asked at the start
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  Speaker 2: of this, were we too relax because we definitely and
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  Speaker 2: quite deliberately opted for Winston's head below the parapet approach.
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  Speaker 2: But maybe what we should have done was opted for
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  Speaker 2: the same approach at Albanesi and Starmatok, which is to
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  Speaker 2: suck up instead, given that look where we are and
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  Speaker 2: they are. Both their countries are now on ten percent,
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  Speaker 2: we're sitting on fifteen.
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