Why Trump is accusing Australia of modern slavery
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Ready? And good morning. This is The Daily Oz. This is The Daily Oz. This is The Daily Oz. Oh, now it makes sense.
Good morning and welcome to The Daily Oz. It's Monday the 27th of July. I'm Elliot Laurie.
I'm Billie Fitzsimons.
Last week, the US hit Australia with yet another round of tariffs, with President Donald Trump saying it's because we haven't done enough to stop modern slavery. The Australian government says that's completely wrong.
These tariffs are unjustified.
Australia is a country that deals with the issue of modern slavery seriously. Today, we're breaking down what modern slavery actually is and why it's becoming the latest point of tension with one of our biggest trading partners.
Elliot, this tariff saga is never ending.
Still going.
Every single week there is a new headline.
I feel like the word tariff wasn't used nearly as much before, you know, maybe like a year ago when Donald Trump started rolling them out. And now it's like every other day, tariff, tariff, tariff.
I know. And there's a new announcement that he's running out of announcements to make on tariffs. And we're always having the conversation of when does it cross the threshold for when we as an Australian publication, a national publication, should cover it.
Yeah.
What happened in the latest US tariff announcement against Australia?
And last week's news was directly about Australia, which is why we're covering it today. And it also had a really interesting angle about modern slavery in Australia. Do you want to first just take us through what actually was the news last week?
Yeah, so on Friday afternoon, the US announced that they would be imposing a 12.5% tariff on Australian exports. At that point in time, we'd had a 10% tariff, and that actually expired at the same time that the 12.5% tariff came in. So it's kind of gone up by 2.5% rather than going on top of the existing 10% tariff. Australia is one of 60 economies around the world that has been hit with a new tariff. Canada, Japan, India, and the UK were on the list as well. And basically the reason that the US gave was that those countries had failed to ban imports of goods that have been made with forced labor.
Yes. Okay. I think first, even though we always hear the word tariff, a reminder on what it means is always beneficial, I think. So take us through first, what actually is a tariff?
So it's basically just a tax on imports. It's applied to foreign-made goods that are brought into another country, and it's always paid by the person who's importing, which is a very significant part of this whole discussion.
Because the business who is importing... Has to pay it. Has to pay it. And they pass on that cost to the customers.
Yes, in theory. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And the reason that tariffs are used is to try to encourage companies to use locally made products or locally sourced ingredients, for example. And that idea is that it supports the local industry. That is the reason that's given. But with Trump, he has also argued that He's had these sort of negative experiences with his trading partners around the world. And so in this scenario, it's also kind of being used as a punishment on the trading partners.
Right. Okay, before we go any further, I think that we should place this news in the context of what has happened since Trump became president for the second time. Yes. Because like we said, this is in the context of there being a lot of different tariff announcements and it's very easy to get lost in all of the different announcements.
Yeah. Well, when I was researching this, I found maybe like 13, 14, 15 different announcements and I was working through them to work out what were the kind of big flashpoints that have led up to this one. And it all started back in April 2025 when he got up and he held that big card. Do you remember that?
Oh, yes, I do.
Yeah, the Liberation Day tariffs. And that's when he put a 10% tariff on most goods produced around the world, kind of for the reasons that I gave earlier on. Then in February of this year, so we're jumping forward almost a year from Liberation Day, the Supreme Court in the US actually struck down those tariffs.
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