President Donald Trump's senior trade advisor, Peter Navarro, has rejected the idea.

He says Australia had a verbal agreement with the US to ease up on the amount of aluminium we're sending to the US, which we haven't honoured.

The 25 per cent tariffs are due to come into effect next month.

Arthur Sinodinos was Australia's Ambassador to the United States and he told The Project Australia isn't killing the American aluminium market at all.

"We make only a very small contribution to the steel and aluminium going into the US. There was an agreement about restraining volumes to a certain level and the idea was that we would monitor what the companies were doing and if the companies were getting out of line, we would let them know so they could pull themselves back."

Sinodinos said that this agreement, made with the Australian government, "was all very informal".

When it comes to dealing with Trump's administration, Sinodinos gave Anthony Albanese some advice.

"Be on the front foot, be confident, go in there with a constructive proposal".