George Brandis warns Australia could suffer under trade war between US and China

Australia could become “losers” if a trade war breaks out between the US and China in the next Trump era, former Attorney-General George Brandis has warned.

US President-elect Donald Trump promised throughout the election he would introduce 60 per cent tariffs on China effective immediately once he takes office in January.

The proposed tariff has left many Australians questioning how it could impact the close export trade it shares with China.

Appearing on Monday’s ABC Q&A program, Mr Brandis said Australia could expect to become the “losers” of the possible global trade war between the two major powerhouse nations.

“Anything that damages China – and particularly weakens China’s demand to what we sell to China – will have an obvious impact on the Australian economy and flow through across the sectors,” Mr Brandis said.

“There are very few countries in the world that are more exposed to international trade and free trade than Australia.

“We are a trading nation, an exporting nation.

“So we are towards the front of the queue of nations that will be prejudiced by American protectionism and economic nationalism.

“We will be very much the losers in a global trade war.”

Mr Brandis, who now teaches at the Australian National University’s National Security College following his return from completing his four-year role as the High Commissioner to the UK, also gave his insight into how Australia will “manage” Mr Trump in the coming years.

Mr Brandis said Trump’s second term of presidency will be a very different landscape to “Trump 1.0”, which heavily relied on the relationship with then prime minister Malcolm Turnbull had with the president.

“I don’t think we should assume that the success that Malcolm Turnbull had for example, with Trump 1.0 getting an exemption from the steel and aluminium tariffs Trump imposed way back then would be repeated,” he said.

“I think that reflected, among other things, the fact that Malcolm Turnbull was very, very good at managing Donald Trump, much better than virtually any world leader.

“I don’t think that we should necessarily expect to have that.”

When questioned whether he didn’t think Prime Minister Anthony Albanese or Opposition Leader Peter Dutton – should he win the next election – could handle Trump, Mr Brandis said “there was a particular relationship between Turnbull and Trump”.

“They got each other, they were in some ways from similar backgrounds, big billionaires,” he said.

He agreed they were similar but further clarified “in some respects, certainly as businessmen” they shared similarities.