Australia's PM Albanese says he spoke with US President Trump and reviewed advancements under AUKUS defence agreement, adds AUKUS initiative continues full steam ahead, while he raised issue of tariffs with Trump and urged to consider full exemption

Trump would consider Australia request on tariffs.

Bilateral tariff exemption requests of this kind have a familiar sequence: leader-level contact produces a commitment to 'consider' rather than a decision, and the hard detail arrives later through formal proclamations, carve-outs, or quiet exclusion lists. Episodes where allies have sought exemptions from broad US tariff actions have tended to resolve on negotiated terms, often conditioned on security cooperation, defence burden-sharing, or reciprocal trade concessions, which is why the pairing with AUKUS in the same readout matters: defence alignment has historically been the currency in which such requests are priced. Australia has prior form here, having secured carve-outs from earlier rounds of US metals tariffs, which establishes a template but not a guarantee, since each administration has treated exemptions as discretionary and revocable. The operative distinction is between a full exemption and a negotiated quota or tariff-rate arrangement, which carry very different outcomes for Australian steel, aluminium, and goods exporters. What is worth watching is any follow-through in formal US trade notices and whether other allies lodge parallel requests, since a widening queue tends to harden or soften the US position. As a headline it is an expression of intent, not policy, and 'would consider' is the weakest rung of that ladder.