SYDNEY – US President Donald Trump’s decision not to exempt Australia from his latest tariffs has sparked immediate concerns about the future of the relationship between the stalwart allies, including whether Washington will stick to a deal to provide nuclear-powered submarines.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on March 13 condemned the “disappointing” tariffs decision and urged Australians to buy locally made products rather than US products, but he rejected calls to retaliate by imposing tariffs on the US.
He said he would not cancel plans to buy American nuclear-powered submarines as part of the three-way Aukus pact between Australia, the United States and the United Kingdom.
“The Aukus deal stands by itself as a good deal for Australia,” he told ABC Radio. “We’re not doing it as a favour (to Washington). We’re doing it as a way of best defending our island continent.”
The US President’s decision to impose 25 per cent tariffs on steel and aluminium is expected to have only a limited effect on the Australian economy. Australia exports about A$1 billion (S$840 million) worth of steel and aluminium to the US each year.
But the move has raised questions about whether the US can be trusted to deliver the submarines and about the impact on the long-term security relationship between the two countries.
A former head of the Australian Defence Force, Admiral (Ret) Chris Barrie, told The Sydney Morning Herald on March 13 that the tariff decision showed that “no agreement (with the Trump administration) is secure”. He said Australia needed to develop alternative submarine plans in case the Aukus acquisitions did not proceed.
“It is important for us to develop a Plan B because of the real possibility the US will never give us the submarines because they need them for themselves,” he said.
An international relations expert, Professor Mark Beeson, an adjunct professor at the Australia-China Relations Institute at the University of Technology Sydney, told The Straits Times that the government had pinned its future security on an A$368 billion plan to acquire nuclear-powered submarines through the Aukus pact, but the deal had become “completely unreliable under Trump”.
“The underpinning assumption that we can rely on the US to have our backs because we fought for them through thick or thin is demonstrated to be threadbare fiction,” he said.
But others urged calm, noting that Mr Trump, though potentially unreliable, had not singled out Australia for punishment and viewed military ties differently to economic ties.
A former Australian defence minister and former ambassador to Washington, Mr Kim Beazley, told ST the decision to impose tariffs was a protectionist economic policy unrelated to the deep military relationship between the two countries.
He said the tariffs would damage public perceptions in Australia of the alliance but “won’t have a bearing on the security relationship”.
“We have not been given reason to be concerned about Aukus,” he said. “Unless we have reason to be concerned, I don’t think we need to at this point.”
Australia has a 74-year-old security treaty with the US and has long viewed Washington as the bedrock of its security in Asia.
Successive Australian leaders have described the US as Australia’s most important ally, including Mr Albanese, who told former president Joe Biden that Australia has “no greater friend” than the US.
Mr John McCarthy, another former Australian ambassador to Washington, told ST the tariffs would be seen by the Australian public as a betrayal, though Mr Trump “would probably see Aukus separately”. But he said he was concerned about Mr Trump’s reliability and his willingness to undermine alliances, as shown by his recent moves to castigate and impose tariffs on Canada.
“He is totally unreliable,” he said. “When you combine the tariffs with all the other things Trump has done, it will have an impact on how the average Australian perceives the US.”
But he added: “While we don’t like the tariffs, and I don’t think it is good policy, we can’t say we should have had special treatment when he hasn’t given it to anyone else.”
For several weeks, Mr Albanese and senior officials have urged the White House to grant an exemption from the tariffs, noting that Australia is a loyal ally of the US, has a free-trade deal with Washington, and is one of few countries with a trade deficit with the US.
In 2018, Australia won a reprieve from Mr Trump’s steel and aluminium tariffs – a decision that seemed to affirm that the country has a special relationship to which Mr Trump was committed.
Australia’s main political opposition alliance, the Liberal-National Coalition, seized on the tariffs decision to accuse Mr Albanese and his Labor Party of failing to do enough to urge Mr Trump and the White House to give an exemption.
The Coalition leader, Mr Peter Dutton, told Channel Nine on March 13 that the Aukus deal was crucial for Australia’s security and that “if it falls over on this government’s watch, that would be a catastrophe”.
But the government pointed out that countries whose leaders met Mr Trump – such as Japan – still failed to secure an exemption.
Australia’s Ambassador to Washington, Dr Kevin Rudd, a former prime minister, told ABC News on March 13 that he believed the current Trump administration was far more nationalist, protectionist and transactional than during his first term.
“We’re up against a deep, ideological, strategic view of this Trump administration,” he said.
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