A powerful American business group has criticised the Albanese government's plan to make more tech companies pay for Australian news, including Microsoft's LinkedIn, and has warned about how Donald Trump might respond (The Guardian).

The group is called the National Foreign Trade Council, or NFTC. It said it was 'disappointed' that Australia is widening the scheme while trade tensions are already running high, including new tariffs on Australian goods. Tiffany Smith, the council's vice-president of global trade policy, said Australia continues to push forward with a news bargaining incentive covering an even broader spectrum of US companies. The NFTC's members include Meta, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Apple, Samsung, BP, Coca-Cola, Ford, Toyota, Shell and Visa. That is a serious lineup of corporate muscle lined up against a charge designed to send money to Australian newsrooms.

The plan is called the News Bargaining Incentive. It would require big tech platforms to compensate media outlets for news that appears on their platforms. Think of it like this: if a platform benefits from people reading news links, the government says it should help pay for the journalism. Platforms can either make deals directly with news publishers or pay a levy to the government. The scheme initially covered Google, TikTok and Meta. Under the expanded plan, big tech platforms must make at least six individual deals with news publishers, up from four previously, to avoid paying the levy.

Assistant Treasurer Daniel Mulino said Australian media could expect to receive $200 million to $250 million in total under the arrangements. That figure matches the amount raised under the former News Media Bargaining Code, legislated by the Coalition about five years earlier, which covered only Meta and Google.

The NFTC's intervention is not new. The council published a statement on 30 April 2026 titled 'NFTC Calls on Australia to Drop Coercive News Media Bargaining Incentive Proposal', describing the legislation as a 'coercive and discriminatory policy that primarily targets large U.S.' companies (NFTC). The council also lodged a submission to Australia's News Bargaining Incentive consultation on 19 December 2025.

How the levy works is fairly simple. The draft bill imposes a 2.25 percent tax on the Australian revenue of the parent companies of certain 'significant' social media and news companies (NFTC submission document). Companies can avoid the charge by making deals with publishers instead. The government is also set to adjust the proposed incentive to better support small and regional publishers (Nine).

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has said he would raise the issue of tariffs with US President Donald Trump (Reuters). That conversation now carries an extra dimension, with the NFTC's warning landing in the middle of an already strained trade relationship.

Not everyone thinks the government is being bold enough. Former ACCC chair Rod Sims said the government was not doing enough to support news and hoped it would move on the AI platform issue.

The broader context here matters. The NFTC's membership spans tech, automotive, energy and consumer goods companies. When that group calls an Australian policy 'coercive and discriminatory' and references the sitting US president, the implied leverage is trade-related. Australia has been here before. The original News Media Bargaining Code faced threats from Meta and Google to pull services from Australia before they ultimately cut commercial deals. The difference now is that the dispute is being framed not just as a regulatory matter between Canberra and Silicon Valley but as a bilateral trade issue involving Washington.

The government's headline revenue figure, $200 million to $250 million, is the same ballpark the Coalition's code produced when it covered only two platforms. Expanding the scheme to capture more companies while targeting the same total return suggests the government is spreading the burden rather than significantly growing the pool. That will be cold comfort to publishers who argue the original code undervalued news content. Sims's call for action on AI platforms signals that the next front in this fight is already visible, even if the government has not yet moved on it.

For the NFTC's part, the strategy appears to be escalation through official channels and public statements rather than direct retaliation. Smith's reference to a 'broader spectrum of US companies' is carefully worded to cast the incentive as a widening tax grab rather than a targeted media policy. Whether that framing gains traction in Washington depends on how the Trump administration reads its own trade interests. Albanese's plan to raise tariffs with Trump directly now intersects with a US corporate lobby urging the White House to pressure Canberra over the same basket of issues.

The government faces competing pressures from three directions. US trade bodies want the scheme scrapped. Former regulators want it broader and tougher. Small and regional publishers want a bigger share of whatever money flows. The $250 million ceiling, if that is what it turns out to be, will have to stretch further than the original code's did, across more platforms and more claimants. How Mulino and the Treasury design the distribution mechanism will determine whether this policy holds together or simply replicates the old code's shortcomings at a larger scale.