Worse than Russia? Voters fear Trump’s America

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Australians have scaled up their concerns about United States President Donald Trump after his first six weeks in office, with 60 per cent saying his election victory has been bad for Australia – up from only 40 per cent who said the same last November.

The exclusive findings heighten the debate over the American alliance when Trump will move within days to impose new tariffs, while defence experts declared the US had become an unreliable ally at a time of tensions with China.

Former ambassadors and Defence officials warned on Monday that Australia should shift to a stronger form of self-defence in case the US retreated from the ANZUS alliance in light of the way Trump had turned on Canada.

In an illustration of security doubts, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Opposition Leader Peter Dutton faced questions on Monday about tensions with China after one of Beijing’s ships passed through Bass Strait.

The exclusive survey, conducted for this masthead by research company Resolve Strategic, finds that 46 per cent of voters believe Australia should form closer relations with other countries – including China – in the wake of Trump’s actions as president.

Only 34 per cent believed Australia should pause or withdraw from the AUKUS pact with the US and Britain to buy and build nuclear-powered submarines, but 50 per cent said Australia should avoid taking sides in conflicts between the US and China.

The concern about America also arose in a question about threats to Australia, with 17 per cent of voters naming the US as the greatest threat while 31 per cent named China and 4 per cent named Russia. The question was: “which do you think is the greatest threat to Australia in the next few years?”

While Albanese and Dutton have backed the alliance with America ahead of the election, a forum convened by former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull heard a series of warnings on Monday about the risk to Australia from a sharp shift in direction under Trump.

Former foreign affairs official Heather Smith said the rules-based order had “collapsed” with the rise of Trump and was unlikely to return under subsequent presidents, heightening the need for stronger economic and defence policies to defend Australia’s interests.

“The biggest challenge for Australia to overcome is the inability of our political class to really position Australia in this new world order,” she said.

Former ASIO chief Dennis Richardson said Australia had to find ways to work with a less reliable America because it was vital to deliver on the AUKUS pact, which assumes the purchase of existing Virginia-class vessels from the US and the construction of a new fleet with the UK.

“Regardless of who was leading the United States, and regardless of whether it was a democracy or not, we would want the closest possible relationship with the United States, simply because of its size, economic weight and importance,” he said.

The strongest warning came from Australian National University professor Hugh White, who said the US could not win a war with China in the western Pacific and was unlikely to come to Australia’s aid in a conflict.

“The challenge for us is not to suddenly start building up forces to support the United States in trying to maintain its primacy in Asia,” said White, who spent decades as a senior Defence official and policy adviser.

“That would require us to be prepared to fight a war in support of the United States, which the United States, as far as I can see, has no intention of fighting and has no chance of winning.”

In a debate that ranged across questions of trust in the American alliance and fear of the rise of China, several speakers said it remained in China’s interest to trade with Australia rather than trigger conflict around the region.

Turnbull, a prominent critic of the AUKUS pact, said Trump had made it clear he was both a less reliable and a more demanding ally.

“How do we in Australia recalibrate? Certainly we need to do more, be more resilient and independent,” he said.

“And yet with an exquisite bad timing, decisions in recent years have made us far more dependent on America just as America was becoming less dependable – not through weariness or neglect but now by deliberate design.”

While Turnbull said Australia needed to prepare for an American decision to change or halt the delivery of submarines under AUKUS, former submarine commander and rear admiral Peter Clarke said there was no viable alternative and Australia had to put “110 per cent” into acting on AUKUS.

The Resolve Political Monitor surveyed 1621 eligible voters from Wednesday to Saturday about the US alliance, as part of a broader survey of 3237 respondents about voting intentions at the May 3 election. The survey repeated a question, asked just after the US election in early November, about whether Trump’s victory was good or bad for Australia.

This month’s survey found that 70 per cent of Labor voters said the Trump administration was bad for Australia, while 49 per cent of Coalition voters said the same.

On a separate question, 31 per cent of voters said Dutton and the Coalition were the best side to deal with Trump, while 20 per cent named Labor and Albanese.

Albanese and Dutton have insisted that the US alliance remains strong, but the new findings on voter opinion come as the Trump administration prepares a new round of tariffs.

The ASX200 lost 1.5 per cent on Monday, or almost $35 billion in value, due to concerns that Trump’s tariffs will hit most countries.

Economists at Goldman Sachs on Monday said the chance of a US recession had increased to 35 per cent due to growing signs the tariff plan would hurt American consumers and businesses.

Gold, a traditional safe haven against inflation, reached a record $US3100 an ounce on expectations price growth in the US will lift after the tariffs come into operation.

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