U.S. President Donald Trump’s foreign policy, including the recent reinstatement of tariffs, must necessarily lead to a rethink in Canberra and Wellington of their approaches to the current American administration. While both the Australian and New Zealand governments have diplomatically indicated their unhappiness with U.S. trade and security policies, they need to be more clear and categorical about their national interests in the U.S. relationship. This includes a willingness to link access to their resources and condition the U.S. ability to leverage their economic and military assets in support of American geostrategic, political, economic and security objectives.
The Make America Great Again (MAGA) Republican Party and the Trump 2.0 administration’s foreign policy is a mixture of bluster, jingoist soundbites and tweets, gulp-inducing tariffs, stop-start threats coupled with a conscious disregard for diplomacy, traditional allies, international norms and U.S. soft power. Whether misguided or not, the administration’s objectives, notwithstanding the head-scratching nature of some initiatives, are relatively simple: roll-back Chinese power and influence, re-home and attract manufacturing, and a rejection of internationalism, international institutions and soft power. This is coupled with an unapologetic nostalgia for U.S. isolationism, exceptionalism, nationalism with an embrace of hard power. The instruments used in this policy have been grounded in 19th century power politics epitomized by coercion, both rhetorical and real, as well as hard economic, technological and military power, which includes a return to an international economic and tariff policy last used in the 1930s. Allies as well as adversaries have been targets of these policies and coercive instruments.
There are several ways foreign governments and institutions can deal with Trump and MAGA policies: say nothing and hope that the sentiment changes (it often does); attempt to work around the policies with other like-minded states; seek out and use effusive praise of Trump (recently done by NATO Head Mark Rutte) to entice the president into supporting one’s preferred position; or push back at the more outrageous and damaging statements and policies.
The governments of Australia and New Zealand have used all these approaches with varying degrees of success.
Nevertheless, both governments need to more explicitly link or condition the U.S. relationship to their own global and regional political, economic and security objectives. Both countries have resources and political, economic and normative power that needs to be better appreciated by Trump administration policymakers. Linkage negotiating makes progress in on area dependent upon progress in another area of national concern and assumes that many issues, such as normative, economic and security issues in the Western Pacific are fundamentally interrelated. It also presumes that a state cannot unilaterally benefit from cooperation in one area, while seeking to take advantage in another area through tension or confrontation. In the context of allies and like-minded states, linkage precludes one state from seeking unilateral advantage over all aspects of the relationship or prevents one state from withholding benefits or withdrawing from the relationship without suffering some adverse impacts. It can also be used to create agreement across a broad range of issues that add momentum to agreement in other areas.
Australia and New Zealand possess many geostrategic, political, economic, diplomatic and normative assets whose use (or non-use) in support of U.S. objectives or sentiments would give pause to the Trump administration for ignoring their interests.
Australia, bordering the Pacific and Indian Oceans as well as Southeast Asia has significant geostrategic importance in the U.S. competition with China and the U.S. ability to project force in the region. These have been brought into focus by the AUKUS agreement and the Quad arrangements which seek to maintain the status quo in the Asia-Pacific while pushing back at Chinese claims in the South China Sea. As part of these defense arrangements, Australia hosts an American intelligence base (Pine Ridge), pre-positioned military equipment, rotational U.S. forces and nuclear submarine facilities in Western Australia. It is a major source of uranium for the United States and U.S. allies, and a major source of rare earths, a category of elements critical clean energy technologies and electronics. It also has significant economic, political, security and diplomatic relationship with other states friendly to the U.S. including Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Singapore and India.
While less hefty than Australia, Aotearoa/New Zealand has significant diplomatic, political, economic and security resources that are important to American policy makers. The country has significant and deep ties to many Pacific Island states and its agreement with U.S. objectives lends credibility to regional concerns about Great Power polarization and nuclear proliferation. It is a member of the Five Eyes intelligence sharing network and a potential partner in Pillar II of AUKUS. Since the 2010 Wellington Agreement that restored military ties, New Zealand has increasingly cooperated with a number of security related matters such as the Partnership for Indo-Pacific Industrial Resilience, to coordinate defense supply chains and a status of visiting forces agreement with the Philippines, a U.S. ally.
Australian Prime Minister Albanese has already made rhetorical moves toward suggesting that the Trump administration would be remiss to ignore Canberra’s concerns. Last week, while giving a speech honoring John Curtin, the prime proponent of Australia’s alliance with the U.S., he noted that Curtin had given Australia “the confidence and determination to think and act for ourselves.” He continued that while the U.S. relationship was a “pillar” of Australian foreign policy it ought to be remembered “as a product of Curtin’s leadership in defense and foreign policy, not the extent of it.”
New Zealand Prime Minister Luxon has similarly suggested that like-minded states must coordinate against Trump tariffs. “One possibility [is response to the tariffs], Luxon noted in April “is that members of the CPTPP and the European Union work together to champion rules-based trade and make specific commitments on how that support plays out in practice…”
One way in which Australia and New Zealand can respond to the Trump administration is to impose retaliatory tariffs on U.S. products as Canada has done. This approach not only upholds the legal importance of the international rules-based trade regime but also recognizes the political aspects of tariffs by targeting particular products.
Second, Australia and New Zealand need to make it clear that there will be no deepening of their security relationships in the Western Pacific and the South China Sea. The current relationships would be the new status quo until the Trump administration provides the appropriate exemptions to its tariff and technology transfer policies. In Australia’s case this would include additional restrictions on Australian interest in AUKUS.
Third, both states must publicly commitment themselves to resisting U.S. pressure and Trumpian bombast that could entangle them in conflict or upset the status quo in the Western Pacific and South China Sea. This includes separating themselves from U.S. efforts to align Pacific Island states against China and more vigorously seeking to cultivate relationships with these states outside of the prism of Chinese-American competition. It could include a more favorable consideration of Chinese efforts to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP).
Fourth, Australia and New Zealand should make their support for U.S. global actions more conditional and nuanced, and their opposition more explicit to Trumpian policies relating to as Gaza, Israel, Iran, Russia, Greenland and the Ukraine.
Fifth, as suggested by Luxon, Australia and New Zealand should coordinate with other liberal states such as Canada, the U.K., Japan, South Korea and the EU to uphold the international economic order and international institutions that have been ignored by the Trump.
The Trump administration has adopted pressure tactics it has used against domestic opponents to pursue its international objectives. As such, it is likely that the administration will either ignore these efforts or attempt to rebuke them. It may also racket up its rhetoric and tariffs in retaliation. These efforts could inflict more economic injury to particular industries.
Nevertheless, Australia and New Zealand should not, and cannot, be ignored by U.S. policymakers given their history, shared values and the resources they bring to their partnership with the United States. Smaller states rely on mutually honored international rules and norms, transparent interaction and stable relationships with allies. As such, foreign policymakers in both states need to make it clear that their sentiments and interests in favor of the United States cannot be taken for granted. The sooner they link solicitous American policies to their economic and security interests, the sooner U.S. policymakers will return to a more pragmatic rules-based approach to international relations that has underpinned economic growth and political security over the past seven decades.
