New Zealand, Australia speak with EU, others about bolstering free trade against US tariffs

By Lucy Craymer, Alasdair Pal and Christine Chen

WELLINGTON/SYDNEY (Reuters) - New Zealand and Australia said on Thursday they are each working with other nations on a possible joint response to shore up free trade against a barrage of U.S. tariffs.

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon of New Zealand said he had spoken with the leaders of Singapore, Vietnam and Malaysia, as well as the head of the European Union's executive about international trade cooperation.

In a speech on Thursday, Luxon floated the idea of members of the European Union and the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) working together.

Global trade has been upended by U.S. President Donald Trump who announced sweeping tariffs last week on dozens of countries, which were met by retaliatory tariffs by some of them, triggering massive volatility in markets.

In a stunning reversal on Wednesday, Trump said he would suspend the hefty tariffs he had imposed on most countries for 90 days.

Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong said government ministers had held discussions with Southeast Asian nations, Japan, Korea, India and the EU about a joint response to Trump's tariffs.

"There is a group of countries who see the benefit of free and open and fair trade," she said in an interview with state broadcaster ABC.

In posts to X, Luxon said he held separate phone calls with Singapore Prime Minister Lawrence Wong, Vietnamese Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh and Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim on buttressing rules-based free trade to spur economic growth.

He said he also spoke to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen about "what the EU and New Zealand can do together to support the trade rules that underpin Kiwi (New Zealand) jobs and growth".

New Zealand, Singapore, Vietnam and Malaysia are members of the CPTPP, which also includes countries such as Australia, Canada, Chile, Japan, Mexico and Britain.

"One possibility is that members of the CPTPP and the European Union work together to champion rules-based trade and make specific commitments on how that support plays out in practice," Luxon said earlier in a speech to the Wellington Chamber of Commerce.

He added that he would head to Britain later in April for talks with Prime Minister Keir Starmer on trade, security and geopolitical issues.

“We can’t make the case for New Zealand sitting at home,” he said. “We have to position ourselves as advocates both for our own economic interests and the institutions that underpin them.”

Trump has imposed a 10% tariff on Australia and New Zealand, the low end of his levies for all imports into the U.S. Canberra and Wellington have both said they won't retaliate. About 12% of New Zealand's and 5% of Australia's exports went to the U.S. last year.

(Reporting by Lucy Craymer in Wellington, Alasdair Pal and Christine Chen in Sydney; editing by Sonali Paul and Mark Heinrich)