Trump will be suspicious of Albanese from the outset — but there are risks for Dutton, too
The PM, somehow, needs to fashion a working relationship with the new president, while Peter Dutton’s problem will be his populist conservative base whose obsession will go into overdrive.
Donald Trump will be the disrupter from the most powerful office on earth – he will pose serious challenges for Anthony Albanese and risks for Peter Dutton as Trump sets out remaking the global order in ways nobody but Trump himself can discern.
There is one certainty amid the uncertainty: Trump’s policies will put Australia under pressure. We need to be smart and flexible but the Prime Minister, somehow, needs to fashion a working relationship with Trump.
The bizarre idea that got currency in the US campaign that Trump would be a net plus for Australia – a notion that seemed to assume he wouldn’t do most of what he promised – will now be tested in the furnace of Trump’s personal volatility and dogmatic prejudices. John Howard tells Inquirer: “Trump is unpredictable. But even allowing for his unpredictability I think Trump will be positive in relation to the AUKUS agreement and the Quad, and he’ll maintain the US commitment to Asia. I think we should be positive.
“The relationship between Australia and America is one that transcends party differences. Trump will get advice that this is a very important relationship and I believe Anthony Albanese will work hard at it. He will have a strong domestic interest in doing so, and will want to avoid between now and the next election any media stories that they aren’t getting on.”
Reflecting on his success in dealing with the Trump administration, Scott Morrison told the author several years ago: “I engaged him (Trump) personally. But I didn’t just engage him. The key to my relationship with the Trump administration was deeply rooted in my relationship with (vice-president) Mike Pence and (secretary of state) Mike Pompeo.”
Malcolm Turnbull’s advice is don’t “suck up”, but this disguises the effort Turnbull made to flatter, reassure and persuade Trump. And it worked. Turnbull said when he caught up with Trump after their famous phone call clash, it was as though “I had sold him some property in Brooklyn for $20m more than it was worth and he was joking with Melania about how he had done a bad deal”.
Albanese, like Turnbull and Morrison before him, will need a strategy to deal with the Trump administration. His early phone call with Trump is positive. But Albanese will be under pressure – he comes from the opposing side of politics. That makes Trump suspicious from the outset. With Trump, Albanese needs a personal point of connection. That’s essential, but what is it? In truth, Turnbull and Morrison set a high bar of success in dealing with Trump and that means Albanese’s competence as Prime Minister suddenly faces a new test.
Kevin Rudd as Washington ambassador will play an important role for Albanese in building these connections across the executive government and the congress. Rudd has been a tireless and impressive ambassador dealing with Democrats and Republicans, the Harris advisers and the Trump advisers, while being a catalyst in getting the AUKUS legislation through congress.
The campaign against Rudd comes from Australia, not America. To the extent it is promoted by the Coalition and its media backers it seeks to damage Labor while undermining the national interest. It needs to be called out.
Former departmental chief and ambassador to the US Dennis Richardson tells Inquirer: “There is no reason why Kevin Rudd’s position should be an issue. If you were to ask president-elect Trump and his transition team today to write down their top 200 priorities, the Australian ambassador in Washington would not be one of them. The people making Kevin Rudd an issue are putting their perceived political interest ahead of the national interest.”
As for the line that Rudd once criticised Trump, well, join the crowd, starting with a person called JD Vance, who once branded Trump a Nazi and has prospered since then.
The immediate message for Australia is to stay calm. But that probably won’t happen because Trump’s victory guarantees hysteria and false claims as politics becomes more febrile. While Albanese faces a challenge, the Opposition Leader needs to beware falling for overreach. Blaming Albanese for any effort by Trump to bully Australia won’t work with the public.
Dutton’s bigger problem is his populist conservative base within the Coalition and its media loyalists whose obsession with Trump will go into overdrive. These people want to inject Trump’s faiths into Coalition politics, starting with climate change. They will want to ditch net zero at 2050 and maybe even follow Trump out of the Paris Agreement.
It will be madness. By seeking to roll back Dutton’s repositioning towards the centre on climate policy they would re-create the Liberal divisions that helped to destroy the Turnbull and Morrison governments. Dutton can be expected to resist such a push but its existence will be a gift for Labor and the teals.
The trap in Australia’s reaction to Trump is to focus on the trivia because the stage is too big to comprehend. Trump comes to destroy the old order but it is unclear what his new order involves. At face value, it points to both economic and strategic revolutions with potentially grave consequences for Australia. Maybe the presidential office will generate restraint. Nobody knows.
In all probability Trump’s re-election constitutes a turning point in US global policy and the formal end of the post-World War II age of Pax Americana based on US global strategic leadership, the system from which Australia benefited so much. Trump campaigned as a strong leader and a peace candidate who would prevent world war III and shun foreign wars – a great image but riddled with contradictions that border on fantasy.
Former Department of Home Affairs chief Mike Pezzullo gets to the essence of the issue, telling Inquirer: “What is different today is the advent of the formidable axis of China, Russia, Iran and North Korea which presents the United States with a choice: knowing that it cannot hold the entire strategic perimeter of Eurasia without leveraging the significant military and economic resources of the European Union, Japan, India, Australia, South Korea and others”, the question becomes: will Trump commit to such an alliance-wide partnership or will he withdraw America into its citadel?
Australia’s future will be largely determined by the answer to this question. Trump is going to be a history-making president because of the times. And you can be sure Trump will send mixed messages. That’s because of the differences within his team – between strategic hawks and revisionist isolationists and between advocates of free markets and government intervention.
Asked about the major risks to Australia from Trump’s ascension, Richardson says: “They are, first, what happens in Ukraine. Second, the trade tensions between the US and China, and the possible consequences for us. And third, the fact there are people in government probably horrified at Trump’s election and who would have preferred it didn’t happen. Albanese knows he has to be disciplined and I think he will be.”
The signs so far suggest Trump’s economics mean tax cuts, a lower corporate tax rate, even higher budget deficits, tariff increases of 10-20 per cent on all imports and 60 per cent on China’s imports – he calls tariffs “the most beautiful word in the dictionary” – thereby threatening deeper global protectionism and triggering trade retaliation from other nations. The net impact of these policies is to put upward pressure on inflation, possibly suggesting inflation will settle above the previous generational norm, and at face value, while the sharemarket may rejoice, this suggests a tough time for consumers – hardly consistent with Trump’s massive voting support.
The single unifying principle – if there is one – is “America first”, with Trump loving transactional deals, repudiating America’s global leadership from the previous era, targeting China in a trade and technology rivalry while suggesting Taiwan needs to pay more for US defence protection.
While a strong US economy is good news and Trump may release some animal spirits, Australia’s interest is free trade, not protection or trade conflicts initiated by Trump with our major trading partner. That’s bad news, even when Trump uses tariffs as a bargaining ploy. Australian economist Warwick McKibbin calculates US tariffs at 60 per cent will weaken China’s economic growth and diminish Australian exports to China with a growth penalty for Australia.
Albanese will face a major headache. He will be expected to use Australia’s special relations with the US to win concessions for our exports from Trump’s tariffs, as Turnbull did with steel and aluminium. That’s the test, but can Albanese meet it? Can he win from Trump what the Coalition in office won? That issue will have direct domestic consequences.
Maybe Trump will be generous to Australia. We don’t know. On security, the assumption is that Trump will support the AUKUS nuclear-powered submarine deal and defence issues arising from the alliance. His first-term alliance experiences with Australia will help in this respect.
But security experts sound a warning. Pezzullo says: “Trump will continue to extend US security to those who are prepared to do more to better defend themselves. Those who spend less on defence than the US (at least 3 per cent of GDP) will either have to lift their spending or make commensurate in-kind contributions to mutual security objectives.”
Australia still languishes at 2 per cent of GDP but our $3bn contribution to the US industrial base courtesy of AUKUS may be enough to satisfy Trump.
United States Studies Centre chief and former president adviser Mike Green says: “If there is an issue, frankly, it’s that the (Australian) government is going to come under pressure to spend more on defence.” Green says the Trump administration would want to intensify US defence deployments to Australia.
Strategic Analysis Australia director Peter Jennings tells Inquirer that Trump would “absolutely” demand Australia spend more on defence: “I think it’s a great shame that we have to have Donald Trump elected in order for us to think more seriously about our own security.”
Trump’s policy on Ukraine is vital in its own right but also for its impact on China. Trump promises to end the war in Ukraine but is obsessed about his image as a leader of strength. How does that contradiction play out? Will Russian leader Vladimir Putin co-operate?
If Trump sells out Ukraine – which seems the likely result – that will undermine effective deterrence against China. The most dangerous myth propagated by elements of the Trump team during the past year is that their policy of being soft on Putin will allow them to get tough with China. Don’t believe it. Weakness promotes weakness, not strength.
A power balance in the region against China works – as Australia knows – only with an effective alliance system. What price Trump running such an alliance model?
Albanese and Foreign Minister Penny Wong have been sensible in signalling that Labor will stand by the substance of its current policies. That’s essential.
Trying to appease Trump would be folly. Yet there will be numerous risks. Albanese has lost his fellow political traveller, Joe Biden, with whom he enjoyed personal ties. Labor needed Kamala Harris to win with the prospect of being a Biden-lite president. Instead Albanese got the big beast in Trump.
Trump’s victory will trigger mass agitation from the political left in Australia. Greens leader Adam Bandt said Australia must now cancel the AUKUS agreement, suggesting a phase of Trump-induced madness. This is useful for Labor since it further discredits the Greens, but it also guarantees disruption on the left that will spill into Labor ranks.
Can Albanese keep the Labor Party sufficiently disciplined not to antagonise Trump? That’s a hard ask. For Trump, what really counts is not what people said about him in the past but what they say about him as president. Labor cannot afford indulgent anti-Trump breakouts.
Albanese said the day after the election he had demonstrated “my ability to work with world leaders”, implying no problem with Trump. But the test here is not just Albanese, it’s the Labor Party.
Trump is expected to withdraw from the Paris Agreement on climate change, but that won’t materially alter the global investment shift to clean energy. Indeed, Trump’s energy policies may actually mean more domestic challenges for Dutton than for Albanese.
Morrison’s former office chief John Kunkel tells Inquirer: “There are potential risks for the Coalition in Trump’s win. There is always a danger that cultural conservatives either in the party or its media backers will project a cultural realignment from the United States to Australia. We are very different countries and our policy debates differ.
“For example, it would be folly for the Coalition’s supporters to reopen old debates because of Trump and begin calling to abandon net zero at 2050 or leave the Paris Agreement. Both Scott Morrison and Peter Dutton have moved the party on from those divisive debates. There is no point having them reopened.”
Given Trump is a transactional leader, Albanese needs something to trade. What is it? Kunkel says Albanese’s focus should be on defence investments, US technology co-operation and “economic security” measures to bolster supply chains. He says: “Critical minerals provide the obvious area of focus. Australia has an important role to play in driving this work forward with concrete actions.”
Pezzullo makes the same point, telling Inquirer: “Trump is a power politician. This will be the age of power and strategic deals which will be a function of hard power calculations. Australia is well placed to make or extend mutually beneficial deals – including in relation to critical minerals, the co-production of nuclear-powered attack submarines at a faster rate, advanced military technology (such as long-range autonomous combat vehicles) and enhanced access to our geographically crucial facilities and infrastructure.”
Trump constitutes a serious challenge to Albanese’s policy nous, his political skills and the capacity of his government to innovate under pressure. You don’t get anywhere with Trump being passive. Albanese needs to offer a proactive view of the relationship and alliance that works for Trump.
The immediate approach is to stay calm and be creative. The weeks ahead will be rocky and filled with uncertainties about what Trump may do, what he may say, and what Republicans, filled with hubris, may say. The Coalition is already targeting Albanese, calculating he probably can’t relate effectively to Trump. But this situation contains risks for Dutton as well.
There are no exemptions for shocks and surprises in the new world of president Trump mark two.
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