Can PM tame Trump on trade? Perhaps, but we need to talk about Kevin

Lima: Anthony Albanese is not the only national leader caught in a geopolitical tremor now that Donald Trump is taking power in the United States. Others are just as trapped as the prime minister while they watch the walls shake and the lights flicker – all of them wondering how to survive the demands of a dealmaker president.

Do they hold their ground or run for cover? Or, more to the point in the vengeful world of the Trump family and its acolytes, do they risk offending the president or cosy up to him instead? Every leader has a different answer. South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol is reportedly taking up golf in the hope he will walk the fairways with Trump. French President Emmanuel Macron is urging his fellow European leaders to stand up for themselves when Trump takes office on January 20.

How to manage the Trump presidency? Anthony Albanese might take note of the British leader Keir Starmer’s approach – agreeable but firm. Credit:

Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto is more cautious: he joined Joe Biden in the White House on Tuesday to show respect for the current president while making sure to post a social media video of a phone call with the next president. Trump complimented him on his good English.

So Albanese is hardly alone in making a careful approach to Trump. The early phase seems positive: Trump calls the relationship with Australia a “perfect friendship”. The problem is that Australia needs the new administration to show consistency on trade and reliability on defence – two qualities Trump lacks.

That makes the Peruvian capital of Lima, which knows earthquakes, a fitting location for the first global summit since Trump won the election. Albanese arrived on Wednesday afternoon, local time, for a gathering of the Asia Pacific Economic Co-operation group of 21 nations, before heading to the G20 leaders’ meeting in Rio de Janeiro on Monday and Tuesday.

Trump attends neither summit, but he will be an overwhelming presence at both. Everyone knows that Biden is a fading force – a lame duck until the January 20 inauguration – and the conversations are all about preparing for the second Trump era.

Illustration by Simon LetchCredit:

So what is Albanese seeking at APEC and the G20? The Australian goals are vague because to state them clearly would be to risk defeat, with a price paid in domestic politics. The standard message is that Australian jobs depend on open trade. The unspoken hope is that Australia will gain an exemption from the coming wave of Trump tariffs.

But Trump has a stated plan to impose 60 per cent tariffs on China and 20 per cent on others, with no mention of special favours. And he has just named Robert Lighthizer, the trade czar who led the tariff push in the last Trump administration, to do the same again. If the last time is any guide, Trump will divide and conquer by picking on countries one by one.

There is no sign, so far, of a co-ordinated response from the APEC and G20 members who stand to lose. The Europeans are making noises about retaliation and have signalled some American targets for European tariffs: Kentucky bourbon, Levi’s jeans and Harley-Davidson motorbikes. But those moves would be small next to the steel and aluminium tariffs Trump imposed in his first term. The reality is that a trade war would escalate – and it would punish households everywhere with higher costs.

While APEC is meant to be about economic reform and open trade, and while the G20 began as a way to counter the shock of the global financial crisis, there is no sign of a common purpose in Lima or Rio. The APEC leaders, for instance, have not talked publicly about sending a unified message about free trade – a move that could look like a deliberate rebuke to Trump.

One group is noticeably silent. The members of the Trans Pacific Partnership, a free trade group that took shape at APEC summits a decade ago, are not talking publicly about meeting in Lima. The 11 members include Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Japan and Singapore. All have an interest in resisting Trump’s trade barriers. While the TPP has met on the sidelines of APEC in the past, there is no such meeting this year.

So who will assert a collective view to counter Trump? Chinese President Xi Jinping is the rising power at these summits. He is not just in Lima for APEC, an event often attended by the Chinese premier rather than president, but is being welcomed with a state visit. He will open the Chancay port just outside the Peruvian capital, built and funded by the Chinese – a riposte to the Monroe Doctrine, the US edict that tries to keep other major powers out of South America.

Xi will be able to capitalise on the anxiety about Trump by presenting China as a force for economic growth. There is a strong chance of a meeting between Albanese and Xi. It is not hard to imagine the president asking the prime minister why Australia relies so heavily on the US when Trump is so unreliable.

Many Australians ask the same question. The latest findings in the Resolve Political Monitor, published in this masthead this week, show that 40 per cent of voters believe the Trump administration will be bad for Australia and 57 per cent believe Australia should not take sides in any conflict between the US and China. The questions were not prefaced with a long explanation that might skew the results, and they were deliberately simple.

Those findings are essential context when Albanese attempts to stand up for free trade at the two summits. How pointed will he be in resisting the Trump agenda when he clearly needs to avoid provoking a volatile leader?

Albanese is in a no-win position – at least when it comes to daily commentary on how he does his job. In one moment he can be jeered for trying to kowtow to Trump; in the next he will be accused of harming the national interest by refusing to buckle to Trump’s agenda.

The fate of former prime minister Kevin Rudd as ambassador in Washington, DC, is the early test. Trump is more than two months away from inauguration and has only just begun to name his cabinet secretaries and key officials, yet the knives are out for Rudd in the conservative bunkers where Trump has his strongest Australian following. The result is a bizarre irony: some of those who talk loudest about national security and the national interest are the very ones who want to appease a foreign leader by sacrificing the ambassador.

Rudd is in a tenuous position because of his past remarks about Trump. But why race to dump him just because Dan Scavino, a Trump loyalist, posted an hour-glass on one of the ambassador’s tweets? Albanese appears confident that Trump will have bigger things on his mind than the fate of an Australian ambassador.

Every leader is trying to feel their way in preparing for the second Trump presidency. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who Albanese knows well, has set out a middle path. Starmer arranged a dinner with Trump before the election to smooth the way to a good relationship. This week, however, he pledged an 81 per cent cut in carbon emissions by 2035 in a move totally at odds with Trump on climate change.

Albanese is attempting to walk a similar path to an agreeable but assertive Australian position with Trump. But the reality is that strong words mean nothing if Trump is intent on imposing costly decisions on smaller countries.

Eight years ago, when Trump won his first presidential election, APEC leaders also gathered in Lima for their annual summit. They used their joint statement to warn about the risk of a protectionist president – without naming him, of course. “We reaffirm our commitment to keep our markets open and to fight against all forms of protectionism,” they said. Trump imposed tariffs on steel and aluminium less than two years later.

It will take more than strong words to stop Trump.

David Crowe, chief political correspondent, is in Lima for the APEC summit.