The special friendship is over. Trump doesn’t care about Australia

Consider it official. The era of special favours is over, even for one of the United States’ most trusted allies.

With Donald Trump’s decision not to provide an exemption to his steel and aluminium tariffs, the US-Australia alliance has entered a new era: one defined by transactions rather than trust. Its implications stretch beyond trade and will prompt confronting, in many ways overdue, questions about our relationship with our most important security partner.

Did Australia’s exemption pleas count for anything with Donald Trump? No.Credit: Getty Images

Yes, we have fought in every major conflict with the US since the First World War. Yes, the Pine Gap joint defence facility near Alice Springs provides invaluable intelligence. Yes, we are planning to spend tens of billions of dollars on US Virginia-class submarines. Did any of that count for a brass razoo with Trump? No.

Even the supposedly magical card in Australia’s deck – that we traditionally run a trade deficit with America – no longer has the same potency.

We can’t say we weren’t warned. The label was right there on the tin. Trump first deployed his slogan “America First” a decade ago. Now, having returned to the White House, he is determined to implement his idiosyncratic worldview with full-spectrum force. No ifs, no buts, no exceptions.

The opposition will paint Trump’s decision as a failure for Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and US ambassador Kevin Rudd, both of whom have said unflattering things about Trump in the past. Malcolm Turnbull’s enemies will point to his unfortunately timed bust-up with Trump on the eve of the tariffs going into effect.

None of that was decisive. From the time these tariffs came into view, Turnbull and former US ambassador Arthur Sinodinos have warned that Australia faced a more difficult task than 2018 in securing an exemption and that, perhaps, nothing could realistically be done to gain one. Securing an exemption would have been an against-the-odds triumph for the government, but it was pushing on a locked door.

Ambassador and former prime minister Kevin Rudd joined current PM Albanese in making Australia’s case.Credit: AP

Crucially, no country has secured a tariff exemption from Trump. Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba visited Trump at the White House last month, and the Japanese trade minister was in Washington this week lobbying for an exemption with no success.

It’s a fantasy to believe skillful diplomacy will necessarily inoculate us from the cyclonic consequences of Trump’s second term, even if he does not view us with the hostility of other US allies such as Canada.

The Trump who gave his State of the Union-style speech to Congress last week was clearly in no mood for carve-outs. Speaking about tariffs with almost messianic affection, he declared that he was willing to inflict short-term economic pain on US consumers and businesses to deliver his dream of a revival of American manufacturing.

As he shouted out a veteran steelworker from Alabama he had invited to attend the address, Trump said that tariffs were “about protecting the soul of our country”.

“Tariffs are about making America rich again and making America great again,” he said. “And it’s happening. And it will happen rather quickly. There’ll be a little disturbance, but we’re ok with that. It won’t be much.”

Making things worse for Australia, one of Trump’s top advisers was out to get us – unlike in 2018. Trump’s trusted trade hawk, Peter Navarro, has repeatedly accused Australian firms of dumping subsidised, below-cost aluminium into the US. This meant the government was negotiating from a position of weakness.

As for the idea Trump would look fondly on Australia because we are pumping money into the US industrial base under AUKUS, such illusions need to be discarded immediately. The US does not believe it owes Australia gratitude for agreeing to sell us three to five Virginia-class submarines, its military crown jewels, even if at a seemingly staggering price.

Trump is a self-interested dealmaker, and each policy argument – including AUKUS – will need to be prosecuted on its own merits, rooted in the knowledge that Trump only cares about allies to the extent they serve his agenda. His decision not to grant Australia a reprieve on tariffs will fuel arguments that the nation needs a “plan B” on submarines and can no longer be so reliant on the US for defence needs.

Knowing that a tariff decision was looming, Albanese has studiously avoided personal criticism of Trump – even over bizarre ideas like turning Gaza into the “Riviera of the Middle East”. While it would be unwise to seek to antagonise Trump, the tariff decision gives Albanese more room to manoeuvre in distancing himself from a president most Australians find alarming. Silence, we now know, does not guarantee success.

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