Trump’s made rejects great again. That may be a bitter pill for PM or Dutton

Around the world, leaders are being defined by the quality of their defiance of Donald Trump. Trump’s hostility to dozens of countries has given their leaders opportunities to win transformative improvements in the polls by standing up to him. Trump is making rejects great again.

Only Trump could have transformed Canada’s Justin Trudeau from zero to hero overnight. Trudeau was already on a conveyor belt to the exit, but he retires with the people throwing bouquets rather than bricks. His last-minute popularity has transferred to the new leader of Trudeau’s centre-left Liberal party. Freshly minted Prime Minister Mark Carney continues Canada’s defiance.

Liberal Leader Mark Carney delivers his victory speech condemning the actions of the US.Credit: AP

He described Trump’s bid to annex Canada as “crazy”. He’s ordered an immediate review of Canada’s order to buy 72 new F-35 strike fighters from the US while he seeks “other options”.

Australia is an early beneficiary of Canada’s quest for other options; Carney this week agreed to buy a sophisticated Australian radar system for $6.5 billion, making it by far Australia’s biggest defence export. Why? To give Canada the ability to surveil its Arctic approaches independent of the US.

And now Carney has called an election to capitalise on the surging patriotism of the Canadian people in what the National Post called a “stunning recovery in the polls for Carney’s Liberals”.

Mexico’s president has enjoyed a similar “rally round the flag” effect. Under threat of US military attack, Claudia Sheinbaum’s approval rating has soared over 80 per cent, the highest of any Mexican president since 1985.

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum’s approval rating has soared.Credit: AP

She hasn’t been in any way confrontational. She’s been reasonable. She met all Trump’s demands. For example, she put more troops on the border to stop illegal crossings, sent the army to bust up hundreds of fentanyl labs and agreed to send cartel bosses to the US for trial. But Trump imposed tariffs anyway.

Sheinbaum reacted in sorrow rather than anger, called the Trump tariffs “unjustified and harmful to both countries”, attempted continued negotiation, and foreshadowed retaliatory tariffs on US goods. Her calm firmness has won her enormous respect.

Others to profit politically from defying Trump include Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky and the pro-independence parties in Greenland, the Danish territory that Trump insists must become US territory by agreement or by force.

“The more aggressive, the more caustic Trump is towards them, the more they get a boost by standing up to him,” observes Craig Kafura of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. “It’s risky to get into a fight with the US if you’re a small country, but there’s political benefits to standing up to a bully,” he told Politico. “And not standing up to Trump is political suicide.”

Illustration by Simon Letch

Trump was less hostile to Britain and France. That gave their leaders more political room to move. Both Britain’s Keir Starmer and France’s Emmanuel Macron have woven an intelligent blend of continued pro-US policies with turbocharged pro-Europe initiatives.

Together with Germany’s transforming new chancellor, Friedrich Merz, they have filled the vacuum to become the new leaders of the West.

Starmer was at a historic low in the polls for a prime minister after only five months in the job, and not surprisingly – he’d cut fuel subsidies and raised taxes. But Trump gave him an opportunity to show new purpose, and he took it. While Starmer hasn’t been combative, he’s been active. He didn’t hesitate to correct Trump in front of the cameras in the Oval Office.

He stood firm for Ukraine even as Trump abandoned it. And the British Labour leader headed the move to create a new “coalition of the willing” to assist Ukraine it in any peace deal.

(Left to right) French President Emmanuel Macron, Opposition Leader Peter Dutton, US President Donald Trump, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer.Credit:

While promising to keep working with the US, he’s announced an acceleration in Britain’s defence budget. When Trump hit Britain with tariffs, the prime minister expressed “disappointment” but said he’d continue to work in a “pragmatic” way with Trump.

Starmer’s deftness has paid off politically: “Strikingly, Labour, rather than the Conservatives who are traditionally seen as stronger on defence, are now seen as by far the best at dealing with key foreign policy and defence challenges,” writes The Guardian’s political editor Toby Helm.

And in Australia? Trump, so far, has been relatively benign. He’s publicly lauded the alliance, although he failed to recognise the acronym. But he hasn’t demanded to annex Australia or insulted our leader. He’s accepted Kevin Rudd as ambassador, despite months of Australian media hysteria.

Trump’s Pentagon strategist, Elbridge Colby, has urged Australia to increase defence spending to 3 per cent of GDP – it’s currently 2 per cent on a planned trajectory to 2.3 – but so have many Australians, including Kim Beazley.

To date, Trump’s only overtly hostile action has been the tariffs imposed on Australian steel and aluminium. And that was equal-opportunity hostility applied to all producing nations except Russia (Russia already labours under a 200 per cent US tariff).

But it’s bound to get worse. America’s biggest industries are coaching Trump in how to assault Australia. They are seeking to direct Trump’s mercantilist malice against Australian sacred cows. Including actual cows.

Big tech wants Trump to stamp out Australia’s modest legislative efforts at civilising the US social media monsters so they can molest our society for profit, as they have their own. And hasn’t that been a success?

Big pharma wants Trump to smash the Pharmaceutical Benefit Scheme (PBS) to extract higher drug prices from Australian patients so only the wealthy can keep healthy, as it is in America. Another success.

And big farm wants Trump to deploy his favourite tool of coercion, the tariff, against competing Australian beef so they can raise the prices they charge US consumers for American-grown beef.

And Trump, all the while, continues to dismantle the alliance systems that have helped keep the peace and protect Western liberties for the last 80 years.

For Anthony Albanese and Peter Dutton, what does this mean as the federal election approaches? “Even though the two leaders would prefer to pretend this isn’t happening, there’s no way Trump and international security won’t challenge them almost every day,” says Peter Dean, a military historian and co-author of the government’s Defence Strategic Review.

“Together with the Chinese navy flotilla that circumnavigated Australia, this brings home that the dangers are very real, they’re not remote, they’re not obtuse, they are lived reality for the Australian public.”

Trump already stands astride the Australian campaigns like a tangerine titan. He intruded this week and will again next. This week, with US big pharma demanding action against the PBS, Albanese announced an increased federal subsidy for medicines under the scheme.

This timing was purely chance, but for the government it was fortuitous. It allowed Albanese to defy the US implicitly, by action, rather than rhetorically, risking provocation. This is how he prefers it. Albanese’s approach to Trump is very much akin to Keir Starmer’s, remaining pro-US while seeking a more independent stance.

And this week saw Peter Dutton make his pitch to be the better prime minister to handle Trump. “Who is better placed to manage the US relationship and engage with President Trump? I have worked successfully with the Obama administration, the Trump administration Mark I, and the Biden administration.” Including helping negotiate with Trump Mark I the creation of AUKUS. He said he’d head straight to Washington, if elected, and “get better outcomes for Australians”.

Dutton continued to criticise Albanese for under-spending on defence and promised to spend more. Under competitive pressure from Dutton, Jim Chalmers’ budget on Tuesday will announce the bringing forward of some defence acquisitions.

It’s shaping to be the first time since Menzies in the early 1960s during Confrontasi that defence spending will be a major theme in a federal election, according to Peter Dean.

Australia’s voters increasingly are anxious. They’re anxious about the cost of living, yes. And now there is Trump trauma and the roiling world: “People have had a couple of years of financial uncertainty and cost of living people have that hanging over them,” says Jim Reed of Resolve Strategic, pollster for this masthead.

“But there are certain pillars we have relied on and one was having the US as our friend, and that’s gone. That feeds into defence spending and the most immediate question – does this affect jobs, does it push prices up? All this feeds into the anxiety people are feeling.”

The political party that can best address this compounding anxiety will win the forthcoming federal election. And for both Albanese and Dutton that will require a deft combination of asserting Australian sovereign independence while also preserving as much as possible the benefits of the US alliance.

Which is reminiscent of a line attributed to British diplomat when confronted with complaints about Americans: “They may be difficult, but they’re the only Americans we’ve got.”

Peter Hartcher is political editor.

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