Australian farmers are anxiously waiting to hear whether $6.2bn in meat exports will be hit in the next round of Trump tariffs, as Anthony Albanese says the fight to reverse American imposts on steel and aluminium could last months.

Amid escalating fears of a global trade war that would hit exporting nations such as Australia particularly hard, the chief executive of Cattle Australia (CA), Chris Parker, said he was “extremely concerned by the protectionist comments from the US president regarding potential implementation of tariffs on agricultural products”.

“Promoting free trade and market access is a fundamental issue for CA, and any new initiative that is a barrier to international trade is something that we will vigorously oppose on behalf of Australia’s beef producers,” Parker said in a statement.

Parker said while he had been closely following the rapidly evolving situation in the US “for some time”, the lack of information made it impossible to estimate the potential hit to the industry.

“Australia has worked hard to gain market access and negotiate trade agreements around the world, which provides the beef export sector with some resilience – we do not want to see that compromised,” he said.

The Australian National University honorary professor and non-resident fellow at the Lowy institute, Jenny Gordon, described Donald Trump’s tariffs as “bonkers”, but agreed retaliation would only hurt Australians more.

“To take a generous view of Trump – which I know is very hard to do – he is actually trying to respond to an American constituency who feels really harmed by the neo-liberal economic growth agenda that’s been going on over there for the last three, four decades,” Gordon said.

“But his policy solutions are bonkers because they won’t work. They’re internally inconsistent. So on one hand, he says we’re going to have all these tariffs to make all this tariff revenue to be able to cut taxes – noting that the tax cuts are for the rich. At the same time, he says we’re going to onshore everything. So America will produce everything at home. Either have lots of tariff revenue, or you’re producing everything at home – you don’t get both.

“Then the other problem is, even if you are producing everything at home – and the US conceivably can do that, unlike Australia – they’ll be a lot poorer. So the US is really shooting themselves in the foot.”

Gordon, a former chief economist at the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, said retaliatory tariffs would simply lead to Australians paying more for imported goods.

She argued the best option would be to use the World Trade Organisation to mount a unified defence of free trade alongside other trade-reliant countries, such as South Korea, Japan and even China.

The United States is Australia’s number one international market for beef, lamb and goat meat. Australian producers sold $6.2bn in beef and meat to the US in 2024, or nearly 30% of the $39bn total in that year.

Meat is the second largest export to the US after gold, followed by $1.9bn in pharmaceutical sales (which includes products from well known companies such as CSL and Cochlear).

In comparison, aluminium and steel exports to the US – which were slapped with 25% US tariffs this week – were together worth $812m in 2024, according to ANZ analysis.

The Albanese government this week ramped up its rhetoric after Trump’s decision to go ahead with higher taxes on metal exports, despite official efforts to secure a similar exemption won in 2018 during the president’s previous term.

The industry minister, Ed Husic, this week branded Trump’s tariffs on Australian steel and aluminium a “dog act” but business groups have backed the government’s determination not to follow in Canada and China’s wake and retaliate to American trade aggression.

Albanese on Thursday preached patience, saying, “The last time around it took many months of negotiations and lobbying in order to achieve an outcome.”

“We’ll continue to advocate over coming days and weeks, and if need be, months as well, to put our strong position. What we won’t do is to punish Australians by lifting prices, which is what tariffs would do,” Albanese told ABC radio.

The three states that drive beef and sheep meat production and export are Queensland, Victoria and New South Wales.

The general manager of international markets at Meat & Livestock Australia, Andrew Cox, said the red meat industry “supports free and fair trade” and that the US is “a highly valued and long-term trading partner”.

“We are watching the trade environment very closely and are avoiding speculation about any tariffs that would drive up prices of food,” Cox said.