Penny Wong set to press for a face-to-face between Albanese, Trump

Penny Wong was set to urge US counterpart Marco Rubio to help fast-track talks between Anthony Albanese and Donald Trump after a Quad foreign ministers’ meeting dominated by efforts to counter China.

Australian ambassador to the US Kevin Rudd welcomes Foreign Minister Penny Wong to Washington ahead of the Quad foreign ministers’ meeting. Picture: X

You can now listen to The Australian's articles. Give us your feedback.

You can now listen to The Australian's articles.

Penny Wong was set to urge US counterpart Marco Rubio overnight to fast-track face-to-face talks between Anthony Albanese and Donald Trump after a Quad foreign ministers’ meeting expected to be dominated by efforts to counter China and secure critical minerals supply chains.

Senator Wong, Mr Rubio, Japanese Foreign Minister Takeshi Iwaya and India’s Subrahmanyam Jaishankar were due to meet in Washington DC late on Tuesday night, just over a week after Chinese aircraft carriers staged their biggest exercise off Japan.

“Thank you (State Secretary Marco Rubio) for hosting our second meeting in six months,” the Foreign Minister said on Tuesday AEST, after Australia’s Ambassador to the US Kevin Rudd greeted her in the capital.

“Looking forward to discussing how we continue to support a peaceful, stable and prosperous Indo-Pacific.”

Senator Wong was set to hold separate talks with all three of her Quad counterparts after the four-way meeting, with the need to reinvigorate the Australia-US relationship with leader-level talks expected to be at the top of the agenda.

Mr Albanese is under mounting pressure over his failure to secure a sit-down with the US President amid a snap Pentagon review of AUKUS and the finalisation by the Trump administration of its new tariff regime.

The Prime Minister, who was stood up by Mr Trump at last month’s G7 summit, was adamant he would get a presidential meeting before too long.

“When we have a meeting, we’ll have a meeting. And when it’s scheduled, that will occur,” he told Nine’s Today show.

Fantastic to arrive in Washington DC ahead of the Quad Foreign Ministers’ Meeting. Thank you @SecRubio for hosting our second meeting in six months. Looking forward to discussing how we continue to support a peaceful, stable and prosperous Indo-Pacific. pic.twitter.com/aNYL70eASW

— Senator Penny Wong (@SenatorWong) July 1, 2025

Mr Albanese confirmed the government was pulling out all stops to secure him an audience with Mr Trump, saying he’d sought the assistance of golf legend Greg Norman.

But he appeared to concede he was yet to receive an offer of a White House visit, suggesting he might have to wait until the flurry of multilateral summits towards the end of the year.

“We’ll see each other a lot in the last months of the year. That’s when summit season occurs. Australia and the United States are both members, of course, of the G20, of the Quad, of APEC,” Mr Albanese said.

The Prime Minister, who is set to meet Xi Jinping for a fourth time this month in Beijing, has raised the prospect he could meet Mr Trump at a Quad leaders’ meeting in India later this year.

The lack of a leader-to-leader meeting between the alliance partners in the six months since Mr Trump’s inauguration has the government worried.

It means the Prime Minister has been unable to directly influence the outcome of a snap review of the AUKUS pact being undertaken by the Pentagon, or lobby over the tariff regime that is set to be finalised in just over a week.

Mr Albanese said Australia was well positioned before the Trump administration’s July 9 tariff negotiation deadline, given it had been slapped with the minimum 10 per cent duty.

“There’s no country in the world that has a lower tariff than Australia. So that’s the starting point,” he said, amid efforts by the government to leverage priority access to Australian critical minerals for lower tariffs.

There are also deep divisions between Australia and its closest ally on defence funding, with Mr Albanese repeatedly rebuffing US calls for Australia to increase military spending from 2 per cent of GDP to 3.5 per cent.

Japan has mounted a similar push back on the defence funding demands, reportedly cancelling an annual high-level meeting over the issue last month.

Tokyo’s reticence to plough more money into military hardware comes despite escalating Chinese military activity off its coast, with two operational aircraft carriers conducting 1120 fighter-jet takeoffs and landings over a four-week period in June.

Japanese Foreign Minister Takeshi Iwaya, left, Indian External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Foreign Minister Penny Wong in Washington. Picture: AP

Australian Strategic Policy Institute executive director Justin Bassi said it was vital for the Quad to forge ahead with practical measures to challenge China’s malign behaviour and stranglehold over critical minerals and other key supply chains.

“The Quad can’t talk robustly about China in private only to issue feeble public statements – this just sends mixed messages that will lead to stagnation of the group as it curses itself with low expectations,” he said. “This foundation must be used to get work done of practical effect and avoid the Quad becoming just another forum in which the principals get together every now and then to tell the truth about China’s behaviour privately and quietly, but not acting to change the behaviour.”

Mr Bassi said Beijing’s bullying of the Philippines in the South China Sea and its intimidation of Taiwan through maritime blockade exercises were among the most blatant examples of its coercive conduct. He said the fact that the Quad foreign ministers was occurring against a backdrop of bilateral irritants between the US and its key Indo-Pacific partners demonstrated the structural strength of the grouping.