‘Low on the priority list’: Trump administration in no rush to appoint ambassador
US President Donald Trump has shown no sign of appointing an ambassador to Canberra despite doing so for more than 50 other countries, fuelling accusations Australia is a low diplomatic priority as Trump weighs decisions on tariff rates and the future of the AUKUS defence pact.
The federal opposition has intensified its criticism of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese for not securing a meeting with Trump this week after the president said he planned to increase his baseline tariff rate from 10 per cent to as much as 20 per cent.
The Trump administration has announced ambassadorial nominees for at least 52 countries, including Malta, Tunisia, the Bahamas, Latvia, Namibia and New Zealand.
The US Senate has approved Trump’s nominees for ambassadors to China, Japan, Canada, Mexico, France, Israel, Britain, Ireland, Turkey and Panama, allowing those diplomats to take up their posts at embassies in their host countries.
Michael Green, chief executive of the University of Sydney’s United States Studies Centre, said that Canberra remained a “coveted posting” in Washington, with high-profile former members of Congress and Republican donors lobbying to be appointed to the position.
“Trump is making them work for it and is not rushing to decide,” said Green, who served as a senior official in George W. Bush’s administration.
In no rush: US President Donald Trump.Credit: Bloomberg
Michael Shoebridge, who served as a senior defence policy official at the Australian embassy in Washington, said the lack of an ambassadorial appointment was part of a “disturbing pattern” of a lack of engagement between the Albanese government and Trump administration, including the lack of a leaders’ meeting.
“We are clearly low down their priority list,” said Shoebridge, a director at the Strategic Analysis Australia think tank.
He noted that Trump’s predecessor Joe Biden appointed a member of Democratic Party royalty, Caroline Kennedy, as US ambassador to emphasise the importance of the relationship, although that appointment took almost a year to announce.
Shoebridge said that personal relationships were more important than ever in the Trump era, given the president did not place the same importance on alliances and traditional policy processes as his predecessors.
Caroline Kennedy was appointed as US ambassador to Australia by former US president Joe Biden.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen
“You can’t coast on past relationships and value. It’s all about: what have you done for me lately?” he said. “It’s up to Australia to make the case for why we matter in the relationship now, and we’re not doing that.”
Australia is not alone, however. South Korea, the Philippines and Germany are other US treaty allies that have not received an ambassadorial nominee. Nor have US ambassadors been announced for India, Russia, Brazil, Pakistan and Indonesia, despite the large size of their populations and economies.
A Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade spokesperson said: “It is not unusual for there to be a period of time between a new administration coming to office and the nomination and confirmation of an ambassador.”
Asked what tariff rate he expected when Trump’s deadline arrived on August 1, Albanese said that “obviously there are statements on a day-to-day basis on these issues”.
“We continue to argue our position, which is that these tariffs are unjustified, they’re an act of economic self-harm and that if we have reciprocal tariffs on Australia, then that rate should be zero,” he told reporters on Wednesday.
Earlier this month Trump announced online influencer and former suburban Sydney councillor Nick Adams as his choice for ambassador to Malaysia, sparking criticism over his lack of diplomatic experience.
Jared Mondschein, director of research at the United States Studies Centre, said he was unfazed by the failure to appoint an ambassador to Australia given the web of close ties between the two nations.
“The breadth and depth of the US-Australia alliance go far beyond the ambassadorial level,” he said.
The US is currently represented by Kennedy’s former deputy, chargé d’affaires Erika Olsen, a respected career diplomat who has been in Australia since 2023.
When Trump announces his choice for ambassador it will probably take many months for the appointee to arrive in Canberra because they will have to pass through a Senate confirmation process and wait for a backlog of other nominees to be cleared.
“The time between nomination, confirmation hearing, and vote has never been longer,” Michael Rubin, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, wrote in May in a piece about Trump’s ambassadorial appointments.
Trump took more than a year to announce top naval officer Harry Harris as his choice for Australian ambassador during his first term, but Harris was soon redirected to serve as the US ambassador to South Korea. Republican lawyer Arthur Culvahouse did not take up his post until March 2019, two years after Trump’s inauguration.
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