Trump-Albanese meeting could happen in India
Anthony Albanese has signalled he could use a gathering of world leaders in India to meet Donald Trump as he justifies Australia’s defence spending as more transparent than the measures used by other countries.
Albanese is the only leader of the Quad grouping – India, the US, Japan and Australia – not to have met Trump in person and faces pressure from the White House to follow NATO and lift defence spending to at least 3.5 per cent of the nation’s gross domestic product.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and US President Donald Trump have not met face to face.
Albanese has spoken with Trump on three occasions and was due to meet the president at the recent G7 meeting in Canada, but Trump cancelled his meetings that day and returned to Washington early to deal with events in the Middle East.
Albanese told the ABC’s Afternoon Briefing that he was ready to meet Trump “when a suitable time can be organised” and noted the Quad meeting was in coming months.
“So these things are being organised, and I look forward to having a meeting and continuing the constructive dialogue that I’ve had with President Trump up to now,” he said.
The Quad has the stated goal of defending a free and open Indo-Pacific, but is widely seen as a forum for containing China.
The date for the 2025 Quad leaders meeting has not yet been set, but the four nations’ foreign ministers are meeting in Washington and, according to a report in Times of India earlier this month, that get-together is likely to set a date for the leaders’ meeting.
Albanese also plans to attend the UN leader’s week in September and deliver his first address to that forum, and a possible meeting in the White House afterwards could occur after that event.
“I think where the meeting takes place is less important than what comes out of the meeting,” he said.
Albanese has repeatedly stated that he does not want to set an arbitrary defence spending target of 3.5 per cent, as the US has suggested. He said that in discussions with the US, the government was pointing out that investment in defence had grown by an extra $57 billion over 10 years.
Australia spends about 2 per cent of GDP on defence, or about $60 billion, and that figure was set to rise to 2.3 per cent by 2033-34. He argued that other countries use fuzzy figures for defence spending.
“The United States, for example, includes some funding for roads and bridges as part of their defence expenditure,” Albanese said. “We haven’t done that in Australia.”
Former Australian spymaster Duncan Lewis, who led ASIO from 2014 to 2019, said on Monday the Albanese government had made a sizeable increase to the military budget but questioned whether it was sufficient.
Lewis, chair of the Australian operations of weapons manufacturer Thales, told ABC Radio National: “The question is, is it enough to have the kind of defence force that we might require in the future? There will have to be an increase in due course.”
Xiao Qian, China’s ambassador to Australia, wrote in an opinion piece in The Australian that his country spent only 1.5 per cent of GDP on its military – “far below the global average” – and highlighted the fact that “China and Australia are important economic and trade partners”.
NATO countries last week agreed to increase defence spending to 5 per cent of GDP. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said last week: “If our allies in Europe and our NATO allies can do it, I think our allies and our friends in the Indo-Pacific region can do it as well.”
But Albanese noted that “they’re speaking about 1.5 per cent of the 5 [per cent] being on related issues of infrastructure”.
“Now that’s not something that Australia does. What we will do is what I have said very clearly – we’ll invest in whatever capability Australia needs to defend ourselves. And that is a way that you make sure that you maximise the defence of this country.”
Opposition trade spokesman Kevin Hogan said it was “frankly embarrassing” that Albanese had not met Trump as Foreign Minister Penny Wong headed to the Quad Foreign Ministers’ Meeting in Washington.
“Resolving trade tensions – particularly tariffs affecting Australian agricultural and manufactured exports – must be a top priority,” Hogan said.
The US president this year imposed a 10 per cent tariff on Australian products coming into the country, alongside most other nations, as well as a 50 per cent tariff on iron ore and steel.
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