One ally has turned on Trump. Will Albanese and Dutton dare to take a swing?

Canada’s incoming prime minister, Mark Carney, had good reason to go hard against Donald Trump this week when he spoke to supporters after winning the vote to replace Justin Trudeau as his country’s leader. The new leader kept up his predecessor’s line against the United States president but added some sharp language of his own.

Carney needed to use fighting words considering Trump has been targeting Canada so bizarrely, given the two countries are strategic allies and share the longest undefended border in the world. Trump claims Canada should be a US state, blames it for drug imports and slugs it with tariffs.

Illustration by Simon Letch

The way Trump has turned on Canada makes his treatment of Australia look benign – unless it is also a sign of the trouble to come for us.

“America is not Canada,” Carney told the crowd of party allies on Monday. “And Canada never, ever, will be part of America in any way, shape or form. We didn’t ask for this fight, but Canadians are always ready when someone else drops the gloves. So Americans should make no mistake: in trade, as in hockey, Canada will win.”

Carney is an unusual politician. He was raised in Edmonton, Alberta, so he knows his ice hockey. He received financial aid to get to Harvard, gained a doctorate in economics and became an investment banker at Goldman Sachs. From there, he became governor of Canada’s central bank and, later, governor of the Bank of England during the global financial crisis. He has not spent years in parliamentary combat.

By rights, Carney should be cautious with any reaction to the Trump tariffs because he knows, as an economist, that retaliation is a doom spiral that hurts economic growth. But he is not sugar-coating the fight ahead for Canadians when they are dealing with a hostile president in the White House.

Canada’s incoming prime minister, Mark Carney and US President Donald Trump.Credit: AP, Bloomberg

“I know these are dark days – dark days brought on by a country we can no longer trust,” Carney said on Monday. “We’re getting over the shock, but let us never forget the lessons. We have to look after ourselves. And we have to look out for each other. We need to pull together in the tough days ahead.”

The strong language is bipartisan. Canada is due to hold its national elections by October, so both sides are presenting themselves as the better side to take on Trump. The conservative candidate for prime minister, Pierre Poilievre, wants to impose retaliatory tariffs on the US and use the revenue to fund tax cuts. “While Canadians are slow to anger and quick to forgive, once provoked, we fight back,” Poilievre said last week. “And we will fight back.”

Canadian voters are making their views known. The Liberals trailed the conservatives by about 20 percentage points at the start of this year, but now the two sides are statistically tied, says Reuters. The turnaround has coincided with the opening phase of the Trump administration. It is too early to be sure, but Carney stands to gain from being tough on Trump.

Australia does not face anything like the threat to Canada. The tariffs on Australian steel and aluminium have a small impact on the national economy. The four big aluminium smelters will find other markets, or they will continue selling to American customers who will have to pay higher prices. The steelmaker most exposed, Bluescope, did not issue a warning to investors after confirmation of the tariffs.

Australia will depend more heavily on America at a point in history when America becomes less dependable.

This goes some of the way to explaining why Anthony Albanese and Peter Dutton are not hitting back as hard as Carney and Poilievre. The prime minister says the tariffs are “very disappointing” and the opposition leader says he is “completely opposed” to the US decision. Neither makes a personal criticism of Trump. Both insist the US alliance remains strong. Albanese would not go as far as Industry Minister Ed Husic, who called the tariffs a “dog act” on Wednesday.

Australia will not follow Carney in proposing tariffs on American orange juice, peanut butter, coffee, footwear, cosmetics, Harley-Davidson motorcycles and more. This is because Trump is threatening 25 per cent tariffs on a huge range of Canadian exports, not just steel and aluminium. But there is another factor. Albanese will not engage in massive retaliation because it would backfire: Australian households would have to pay the higher prices.

Nor can Australia resort to the other Canadian option – a threat from Ontario to impose a 25 per cent surcharge on the electricity it sells to customers south of the border. This seems to have discouraged Trump from slapping even higher tariffs on Canadian products.

But the Australian leaders look timid compared with their Canadian counterparts. Carney is bluntly warning that Canadians can no longer trust the US, while Albanese and Dutton are claiming that ANZUS and AUKUS remain robust. The truth is that Australia will depend more heavily on America at a point in history when America becomes less dependable.

This must shape the election in May, but the skirmish over Trump is at an early stage. Dutton blames Albanese for the steel and aluminium tariffs, as if a phone call from the prime minister to the president would have made any difference. Albanese blames Dutton for not showing national unity, as if it is unfair for an opposition leader to criticise a prime minister. So far, so predictable.

Albanese wants to frame Dutton as the Trumpist candidate in Australian politics – and has some material to work with. One of Trump’s biggest supporters in Australia, the mining billionaire Gina Rinehart, is also one of Dutton’s strongest backers – as she showed by having the opposition leader positioned alongside her in a mural for her birthday. The painting, revealed in The Australian Financial Review this week, is the last thing Dutton needs: being close to a wealthy Trump supporter will not win over the battlers.

The fact is that most Australians do not like Trump. Only 26 per cent of Australian voters said last October they would have voted for him, while 52 per cent backed the Democrat candidate for president, Kamala Harris. Once the US election was over, 40 per cent said the outcome was bad for Australia. While the Resolve Political Monitor in this masthead also shows that more voters think Dutton is the best choice to handle Trump – mostly because he is seen as stronger than Albanese – this does not mean Australians want their leaders to be more like Trump. The message is the very opposite.

Who will be Australia’s answer to Carney? Will either Albanese or Dutton want to sound more like the Canadian leader when they respond to the upheavals from the White House? This would not be easy for Dutton, who called Trump a “big thinker” for his proposal to relocate Palestinians from Gaza. It is clearly possible for Albanese – if he is willing to risk a row with the president.

The lesson from Canada is that Australian leaders must be ready to put on the ice hockey gear. And drop the gloves if required.

David Crowe is chief political correspondent.