Election 2025: Donald Trump sinks trust in US, cruels Dutton run

Donald Trump’s toxicity to Australian voters and Peter Dutton’s election campaign has been laid bare in a new poll revealing Australians’ trust in the US has plunged.

Ben Packham

US President Donald Trump shakes hands with El Salvador's President Nayib Bukele during a meeting in the White House’s Oval Office this week. Picture: AFP

2 min read

9:00PMApril 16, 2025

Donald Trump’s toxicity to Australian voters and Peter Dutton’s election campaign has been laid bare in a new Lowy Institute poll revealing Australians’ trust in the US has plunged to its lowest level in at least two decades.

The pre-election preview of the annual survey has found only 36 per cent of Australians have any level of trust the US will act responsibly in the world – a 20-point crash since last year’s poll.

Reflecting the soaring strategic anxiety being experienced by American allies as the President up-ends the global order, 80 per cent of respondents said the US alliance remained important to Australia’s security.

It comes as the Opposition Leader seeks to distance himself from the conservative US President, who has slapped 25 per cent tariffs on Australian steel and aluminium and a 10 per cent duty on all other Australian exports to America.

The Lowy poll, in its 20th year, shows Australians overwhelmingly disapprove of Mr Trump’s use of tariffs to pressure countries to comply with his demands (81 per cent), and his plan to seize Greenland from Denmark (89 per cent).

A sizeable majority of Australians also disapprove of Mr Trump’s move to pull the US out of the Paris climate agreement (74 per cent) and the World Health Organisation (76 per cent), and to negotiate with Vladimir Putin on Ukraine’s future (74 per cent).

“Given President Donald Trump’s norm-shattering approach to his second term, it’s no surprise Australians are less trusting of the US,” the Lowy Institute’s director of foreign policy, Ryan Neelam, said.

“But Australians continue to show that they still separate the unpredictability of the White House from the role the US alliance plays in our security.”

Mr Dutton has argued that he is better placed to deal with the Trump administration than Anthony Albanese, who has struggled to get a phone call with the US President in recent times.

Australians are almost evenly split on whether Mr Albanese (34 per cent) or Mr Dutton (35 per cent) would be better able to manage the relationship with Mr Trump in the White House.

Peter Dutton has sought to distance himself from Donald Trump. Picture: Richard Dobson / Newswire

The poll reveals more Australians back the Prime Minister as the better leader to handle foreign policy over the coming three years. Mr Albanese also enjoys a 20-point lead over Mr Dutton on the question of who would be a better leader to manage Australia's relationship with China and Xi Jinping.

Voters’ perceptions over the ideological ties between Mr Dutton and the US President have seen a “Trump bump” for Mr Albanese, prompting the Liberal leader to declare he is prepared to have a fight with Mr Trump to defend Australia’s interests.

Incumbent leaders across the world are experiencing a similar boost in popularity, but the phenomenon appears more pronounced for progressive leaders.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney is riding anti-Trump feelings in his election race with conservative rival Pierre Poilievre as the US President slaps Canada with tariffs and talks of annexing it as the US’s “51st state”.

The poll of 2117 Australians was taken on March 3-16, just weeks after Mr Trump branded Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky a “dictator” in an extraordinary Oval Office encounter.

Most Australians are opposed to the Trump administration’s foreign aid cuts (64 per cent) and its mass deportations of immigrants from the US (56 per cent).

The public is evenly divided on Mr Trump’s demand that allies spend more on defence.