SYDNEY (Reuters) -Australia Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said his relationship with U.S. President-elect Donald Trump has had a “very good beginning”, elaborating on a phone call between the pair after the Republican’s U.S. election win.

Albanese this week said he told Trump on the call that the United States has a trade surplus with Australia and it was in Washington’s interest to “trade fairly” with its ally.

Under the first Trump presidency, Australia won an exemption from U.S. tariffs for its aluminium and steel exports.

In remarks broadcast on Sky News on Sunday, Albanese described the call as a “very good beginning to our relationship”.

It was a “positive phone call that we had. We spoke for 10 minutes, it was one of the first phone calls that he made,” the leader of Australia’s centre-left Labor government said, according to a transcript.

Albanese’s call with Trump also covered security ties including the AUKUS deal, which will see Australia buy U.S. nuclear submarines next decade and develop a new class of nuclear powered submarines with the U.S. and Britain.

Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong said this month that the government was confident of its alliance with the United States, its biggest security partner.

One potential issue for the government is the relationship between the incoming administration and Australia’s ambassador in Washington, former Labor Party prime minister Kevin Rudd, who previously made disparaging comments about Trump in his capacity as the head of a U.S.-based think tank.

Albanese, asked if Rudd would stay in the role, said he was doing “a terrific job” and would remain.

“He is Australia’s appointment and it says something about the importance of the United States that we have appointed a former prime minister,” Albanese told the Australian Broadcasting Corp., according to a transcript on Sunday.

BEIJING (Reuters) – China’s President Xi Jinping told his U.S. counterpart Joe Biden that the issues of Taiwan, democracy, human rights and rights to development are “red lines” for China and not to be challenged, the official state media Xinhua said on Sunday.

Xi warned the United States not to get involved in bilateral disputes over islands and reefs in the South China Sea or “aid or abet the impulsion to make provocations” in that region, it said.

China and United States would roil or even see relations take a setback in rivalry with each other, but could make considerable progress by treating each other as partners and friends, Xi told Biden on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic forum summit in Peru, according to Xinhua.

LONDON (Reuters) – A senior economic adviser to U.S. President-elect Donald Trump has said Britain should align itself with the United States on trade rather than pursue closer ties with the European Union.

Speaking to BBC radio, Stephen Moore said the EU had a “socialist model” and suggested the U.S. would be less interested in a free trade deal with Britain if the government put its economic relations with the EU ahead of those with the U.S.

“The UK is kind of caught in the middle of these two forms of economic model and I believe that Britain would be better off moving towards more of the American model of economic freedom. And if that were the case, I think it would spur the Trump administration’s willingness to do the free trade agreement with the UK,” said Moore.

Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey on Thursday urged Britain’s new Labour government to rebuild ties with the EU.

While the government has ruled out rejoining the EU’s single market or customs union, Prime Minister Keir Starmer has said he wants to improve trade ties and diplomatic relations with the bloc.

Finance minister Rachel Reeves, speaking just before Bailey at the same event, said Britain needed to “reset” its relationship with the EU, and that she also looked forward to working closely with Trump to strengthen trade ties.

While Bailey did not refer directly to the U.S. election in his speech, policymakers around the world are still digesting Trump’s victory and the prospect of double-digit tariffs on goods imported by the United States.

LONDON (Reuters) -British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said on Saturday he would defend decisions taken in his Labour government’s first budget “all day long”, while farmers protested over changes to inheritance tax.

Addressing a Welsh Labour Conference in Llandudno, north Wales, Starmer did not refer directly to the farmers’ complaints, but he said he stood by the decisions made in finance minister Rachel Reeves’ Oct. 30 budget statement.

“Make no mistake, I will defend our decisions in the budget all day long,” he said.

“I will defend facing up to the harsh light of fiscal reality, I will defend the tough decisions that were necessary to stabilise our economy.”

While Starmer spoke, hundreds of farmers protested outside the conference venue over a budget measure that will mean more of them having to pay inheritance tax. Their protest included a convoy of tractors.

Farmers have warned that the move will threaten the viability of farms, force them to sell land, make produce more expensive and threaten food security.

One of the protesting farmers, Gareth Wyn Jones, told Sky News that Starmer had angered the farmers further by not speaking to them after his speech.

“It’s so frustrating that he’s run out the back door like a flippin’ rat, people here have come here to talk to him,” he said.

Farmers plan a major protest in London on Nov. 19.

UK businesses have also warned that increased employment taxes and a rise in the minimum wage from the budget will stoke inflation and have a negative impact on investment and jobs.

By Lisandra Paraguassu

BRASILIA (Reuters) – Diplomats from the Group of 20 major economies struggled on Saturday to overcome differences on paying to tackle climate change, taxing the super rich and addressing the Ukraine war as they negotiated a joint statement before their leaders’ summit.

The G20 summit in Rio de Janeiro on Monday and Tuesday comes as the United Nations COP29 climate talks enter their second week, with negotiators debating a new goal for how much money richer nations will cough up to confront climate change. 

U.N. officials and other delegates in Baku expressed hopes that a strong message from the G20 leaders could help provide political momentum for a COP29 deal on climate finance.    

However, four diplomats involved in the talks in Rio said they were at a familiar impasse: developed nations want some of the wealthier developing countries to contribute financing to tackle global warming, but the developing world says it is up to the world’s wealthiest nations to foot the bill.

Reaching a global accord may only get tougher with the return to power of U.S. president-elect Donald Trump, who is preparing to again pull the United States out of the Paris climate accord.

Addressing the Russian invasion of Ukraine has also been a prickly issue for the G20 since 2022, and the war in Gaza has added to the group’s geopolitical divisions.

G20 sherpas leading the talks in Rio have tried to avoid discussing the wars in advance meetings all year. Now diplomats say they plan to limit any text to a general paragraph based on U.N. principles and the need to respect peace, followed by a paragraph on Ukraine and another on Palestine.

The taxation of large fortunes, a proposal dear to President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, host of the G20 summit, has also hit a stumbling block.

In a last minute change of mind, Argentina refused to sign off on the inclusion of the proposal in the final communique.

Argentina’s strong opposition to taxing the super-rich came after its right-wing libertarian President Javier Milei visited Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, making him the first foreign leader to visit the U.S. president-elect.

Sources involved in G20 talks said Argentine negotiators, at Milei’s request, now seek to remove mention of taxing the most wealthy, which might only enter the communique with a note reflecting that it was not backed by Argentina.

(Reuters) – TikTok’s Chinese parent company ByteDance is valuing itself at about $300 billion after a recent buyback offer, the Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday, even as the tech giant’s popular TikTok app faces the prospect of a looming ban in the U.S.

The TikTok parent in recent days told investors it was looking to buy back shares at about $180 a share, the newspaper said.

ByteDance investors have viewed President-elect Donald Trump’s return to the White House as an overall positive for TikTok’s hopes in the U.S., as per the report.

At Bloomberg BusinessWeek interview in June, Trump said, “I’m for TikTok because you need competition. If you don’t have TikTok, you have Facebook (NASDAQ:META) and Instagram.” Trump had previously called TikTok a national security threat but soon after he too joined the platform, which is used by about 170 million Americans.

A law signed by U.S. President Joe Biden on April 24, gives ByteDance until Jan. 19 to sell TikTok or face a ban. The White House has said it wants to see Chinese-based ownership ended on national-security grounds but not a ban on TikTok.

TikTok and ByteDance sued in U.S. federal court in May, seeking to block the law signed by Biden.

Both TikTok and ByteDance did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

Investing.com — Despite increased inflation concerns, tariffs are likely to persist in the U.S., as outlined by UBS Chief Economist Paul Donovan. 

Voters’ concerns about inflation were pivotal in recent U.S. elections, with many attributing personal hardship to rising prices. 

However, according to Donovan, this perception may not deter the U.S. from imposing tariffs, as the immediate economic and political factors suggest continued momentum toward protectionist policies.

Tariffs inherently add costs to imported goods, with the impact eventually reaching American consumers. 

When a tariff, for instance, imposes a 20% tax on an imported item, its final price in stores might only reflect an 8% increase. 

This less dramatic impact on shelf prices is because tariffs apply solely to the point of import. 

As products move along the supply chain, some of the cost increase is mitigated by adjustments in profit margins and other distribution costs, making these increases less conspicuous to consumers.

Moreover, the effect of tariffs is particularly muted on infrequently purchased items, such as consumer durables. 

Inflation perceptions are disproportionately influenced by the prices of frequently purchased goods like food and gasoline, which are often domestically produced and less affected by tariffs. 

This disconnect may mean that while tariffs contribute to inflation in the aggregate, they do so in ways less likely to stoke broad political backlash. 

Consequently, while tariffs do raise prices, they may do so without strongly impacting the politically sensitive aspects of inflation perception.

There is no indication that tariffs will be reined in purely by inflation concerns in this context. According to UBS, policy decisions under leaders with protectionist agendas are likely to be influenced by political motives.

Despite how tariffs will increase inflationary pressure, the structural nuances of how tariffs affect consumer prices are likely to prevent inflationary fears from deterring trade measures, for now.

Investing.com – At a press conference following the Federal Reserve’s decision to slash interest rates by 25 basis points last week, Chair Jerome Powell noted that the potential economic policies of the incoming Trump administration would not impact “near term” decisions made by the central bank.

Although he acknowledged that Trump’s plans to slash taxes and impose harsh tariffs on US imports will be considered, Powell flagged that it could take some time before officials have enough clarity to gauge the impact of these policy changes on their calibration of interest rates.

In order to gauge how officials may assess the election outcome at their final gathering of the year next month, analysts at Deutsche Bank (ETR:DBKGn) led by Matthew Luzzetti scoured through the minutes of the meeting of the rate-setting Federal Open Market Committee in December 2016 — one month after Trump was first elected to the White House.

They said that meeting had a “number of parallels to this year, with President Trump set to take the White House and promising dramatic shifts in the economic policy landscape.”

The December 2016 meeting had a clear focus on fiscal policies, the analysts said, with the Fed largely anticipating a more expansionary stance at the time. Although there was significant uncertainty around the “timing and form” of fiscal and trade policies, they noted that “about half” of Fed officials began factoring in these changes to their baseline rate outlooks. Almost all, meanwhile, said the risks tilted towards stronger growth and “many” saw this as “potentially necessitating somewhat tighter monetary policy than currently anticipated.”

Some economists have speculated that Trump’s proposals, especially the blanket import levies, could drive up inflation and lead the Fed to leave rates at a higher level than initially anticipated. This uptick in volatility may exacerbate the possibility of a clash between the Fed and the new Trump administration, the Wall Street Journal said.

Last week, Powell flatly rejected notions that Trump could dismiss him from his post, telling reporters that he would not resign if asked to by the upcoming administration. Powell would also likely lodge a legal challenge to any attempt to oust him before his term comes to a close, the WSJ reported.

For his part, Trump has not recently indicated any plans to try to force out Powell, saying in June that he would allow Powell to serve out the remainder of his term “especially if I thought he was doing the right thing.” Trump’s advisers are split on how far he should take the matter, the WSJ said.

Meanwhile, any alterations in the makeup of the Fed may threaten to disrupt an ongoing bid by policymakers to defeat inflation without sparking a meltdown in the wider economy or labor demand. The Fed has described economic activity as on a “solid pace.”

SYDNEY (Reuters) – New Zealand signed a trade deal on Saturday with Switzerland, Costa Rica and Iceland to remove tariffs on hundreds of sustainable goods and services, in a move Wellington says will boost the country’s export sector.

The Agreement on Climate Change, Trade and Sustainability (ACCTS) was signed at a ceremony during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) in Peru on Saturday after being struck in July, Trade and Agriculture Minister Todd McClay said in a statement.

“This agreement removes tariffs on key exports including 45 wood and wool products — two sectors that are vital to achieving our goal of doubling New Zealand’s exports by value in 10 years,” McClay said.

“It will also reduce costs for consumers, removing tariffs on hundreds of other products, including insulation materials, recycled paper, and energy-saving products such as LED lamps and rechargeable batteries.”

The deal prioritised New Zealand’s “sustainable exports”, he said, amid a roll back by the country’s centre-right government of environmental reforms in a bid to boost a flailing economy. Exports make up nearly a quarter of New Zealand’s economy.

BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) – Argentina will partially eliminate taxes levied on goods purchased abroad, a senior official announced on Friday, part of a broader economic opening championed by libertarian President Javier Milei.

The measure is set to go into effect in December and aims to give consumers access to cheaper products, according to presidential spokesperson Manuel Adorni.

The plan will boost the limit on foreign purchases exempt from tax, to $3,000 from $1,000 per package delivered, according to Economy Minister Luis Caputo.

It also includes a tariff exemption of up to $400 on imported goods for personal use with buyers only subject to the country’s value-added tax, he added in a post on X.