Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has blamed an “ideological disagreement” as US President Donald Trump targets Australia in a wave of fresh tariffs.

The White House is proposing new levies for 60 countries that it says are not doing enough to fight slavery in their supply chains.

Under the proposal, a 10 per cent temporary tariff imposed in February on Australian goods will rise to 12.5 per cent from July 24.

“The acts, policies and practices of Australia related to the failure to impose and effectively enforce a forced-labour import prohibition are unreasonable and burden or restrict US commerce,” US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer found in a report published overnight.

But Albanese said on Thursday the tariffs were unwarranted and would only push up prices for American consumers.

“There is an ideological disagreement where the United States administration has broken with what was a decades-long understanding that tariffs are not positive for the country that is imposing them,” he told the ABC’s AM program.

Albanese said the latest swathe of trade penalties from the US came without notice.

“We continue to use every opportunity that we have to advocate that US tariffs imposed in Australia are unwarranted,” he said.

Trade Minister Don Farrell has spoken to Greer on the sidelines of the OECD ministerial meeting being held in Paris to argue the new import tax is unjustified.

Albanese said Australia had “robust, comprehensive and world-leading” laws to tackle modern slavery.

It is understood there will be no change to existing tariff exemptions for Australian beef and gold.

Other American allies including Canada, Israel, Japan, New Zealand and the European Union, along with adversaries such as China and Russia, are also covered under the latest tariff ruling.

“The failure of our most important trading partners to address the importation of goods made with forced labour is unacceptable … we will no longer tolerate this disparity,” Greer said on Wednesday (AEST).

Former Australian ambassador to the US Joe Hockey said he’d argued personally with Trump about his tariff policies and warned he was “not for moving”.

“America is running out of money, and they need to get it from somewhere. And the President of the United States is convinced that foreigners pay tariffs imposed by America, whereas in fact it is American consumers that pay higher prices,” Hockey told ABC Radio National on Thursday.

-AAP