The prime minister's future on tariffs is painfully in Donald Trump's hands. (ABC News: Matt Roberts)
Jim Chalmers late last year lauded Canada's former finance minister Chrystia Freeland as a "great friend to me".
The treasurer described the 56-year-old former journalist running to become Canada's next prime minister as "an absolute legend" who cooperated with Australia on "the global economic stage".
Two months on, quite a bit has changed. Donald Trump is back in the White House. Like Canada, Australia is headed for its own showdown with political destiny in coming weeks.
Which is why Freeland's approach to Trump's tariff bluster offers a fascinating counterpoint to Anthony Albanese's softly-softly, hope-he-doesn't-bite management of the president's full frontal assault on a global trading system that has made both Australia and the US wealthy.
"I have a message today for President Trump. If you force our hand we will inflict the biggest trade blow that the United States has ever endured," Freeland said this week.
Freeland knows quite a bit about MAGA-land. She speaks the lingo having been Canada's chief negotiator when Trump 1.0 slapped tariffs on America's northern neighbour.
She spent months wrestling the president's then trade representative Robert Lighthizer and Trump's current trade guru, tariff fanatic Peter Navarro.
Clearly she's had a gutful.
There will be "dollar-for-dollar retaliation", she vowed, on "any tariff imposed on Canada" in a "surgical" strike that personally hits Trump and his boosters led by Elon Musk.
Top of her list are 100 per cent tariffs on all Teslas and a ban on Wisconsin dairy farmers: "We know how important they are for the president, and we're not going to let them sell their products in Canada any more."
Punchy, refreshing and uncompromising, Freeland's strategy is not necessarily one Albanese should follow. But it may pay to start thinking in those terms or risk being caught in what looks like a silly trap.
Potential tariff exemption
The prime minister had a clear win after speaking to Trump on Tuesday and Albanese was justifiably eager to talk it up. Within minutes of the call, he revealed the president had agreed to "consider" an exemption on Australian steel and aluminium tariffs. Happy days.
By the end of the week, Albanese basked in a hero's welcome by Bluescope steel workers in Port Kembla.
Nobody sane is suggesting the prime minister needlessly antagonise Trump. Indeed, it's clear Albanese's strategy is all about "looking through" the daily chaos and sticking to our fundamental arguments for why an exemption is justified.
US tariff exemption for Australian metal exports 'under consideration'
Photo shows Inside a factory where steel is being made.
But whether he likes it or not, the prime minister's future on this issue is now painfully in Trump's hands. The tariffs are due to take effect on March 12, just as an election campaign is about to begin, if it hasn't already.
Sweating on whether Trump plays nice is ultimately a humiliating and pathetic place to be. Not just for the prime minister but the nation at large.
It belies the leverage Australia has, from the critical minerals America is so desperate to secure, to military basing, weapons storage and intelligence sharing.
And that's before talking about AUKUS, a $350 billion all-or-nothing bet on future security.
"There would be very few allies able to say to the US 'look at what we've done for you and the access we've given your war-fighting strategy in Asia'," says Sydney University Professor James Curran.
Writing in the forthcoming March edition of Australian Foreign Affairs magazine, Curran calls it Australia's extraordinarily generous "continental gift" to the US.
"We've basically given the country to the US war-fighting machine. The level of integration is unprecedented at any moment in our history, without any real public acknowledgement of what that might mean for Australia's sovereignty and freedom of movement.
"But that's seemingly not enough for the trade hard heads in the White House to leave us alone on tariffs."
Would an aluminium exemption help?
Former ambassador to the US Arthur Sinodinos on Friday told the ABC Insiders podcast Australia should put its argument in positive terms.
This includes telling the Americans that "we need to be exporting as much as we can to the US so we can afford to buy the aeroplanes and everything else [they've] identified we need".
The tariffs problem is more about the Coalition than Rudd
Photo shows A close up image of Kevin Rudd with his hand on his chin.
Much of the debate over whether Australia can get special treatment from Trump risks losing sight of the real stakes.
While it would damage Albanese politically, failure to get an exemption on aluminium is far from the end of the world. Trump is the cause of this problem, not the Australian prime minister.
Just because the former Coalition government secured such an exemption does not mean Labor's credibility is best judged on the basis of winning a repeat performance.
For one thing, it's helpful to remember that Australia's long-run aluminium exports to the US are essentially a rounding error.
Certainly not enough to turn them into a fevered political fetish, which is what they now look like.
A look at the data
Until 2016, aluminium shipments to the US rarely rose above $50 million a year, according to US Commerce department figures. Last year it was about $130 million, down from just over $300 million in 2022 and 2023, which were years when the US effectively banned Russian aluminium imports in response to the Ukraine war.
For context, globally Australia ships more than $10 billion in aluminium a year. Its percentage of the US market is a low single digit. Trade Minister Don Farrell noted this week that the US numbers are falling because Australia's exporters are finding new markets willing to pay more.
Which is why Navarro's claim this week that Australia is "killing" the US aluminium market — valued at $71 billion in 2023 — is so brain-achingly absurd.
But if that's truly the argument that sways Trump, and he allows Navarro to cast Australian aluminium as a "threat" to US national security, it'll pay the politico-media class to keep a level head.
A tariff on Australian aluminium is a drop in the bucket. No more, for arguments' sake — on a very good day — than about $100 million a year. A number, by the way, that US consumers would pay.
Which is many magnitudes less than what our iron ore, coal and LNG producers sell on any given day. Probably before breakfast. In 2023-24, ore and energy exports cleared $200 billion.
Given Trump's unpredictability, Albanese may find himself with little choice about whether to adopt a more assertive approach, particularly on trade.
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'Start getting your cowboy hats on'
What would Peter Dutton do in response? The opposition leader, awake to the dangers of Trumponomics, went out of his way this week to remind the president that he is staunchly pro-trade and opposed to tariffs.
"I don't support the imposition of tariffs in any circumstance unless there is a national security imperative," says Dutton. "We can have our best shot at doing a lot more with the United States if we don't have a tariff in place".
Ultimately, this comes down to whether voters want a leader who folds to Trump's self-interest and deal manipulation or one that stands for the broadest national interest.
Senator Jacqui Lambie, channelling Canada's Freeland, told Trump to "start getting your cowboy hats on".
Albanese should "tell 'em we're not playing this tariff game, mate", she said.
"We are worth a hell of a lot more [to them] than what they are to us. They need us."
History tells us that once started, trade wars take a long time to unwind and end badly.
Rather than fetishising the political importance of whether Albanese secures another aluminium exemption, there's a far bigger contest at play.
Do voters and businesses and workers want a global trading system that gives small and middling economic powers a say? Or are we now embracing the notion that might-is-right because we've cosied up to an erratic bully?
As Taylor Swift observes, play stupid games, win stupid prizes.