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    Pentagon review reportedly confirms Aukus submarines pact is safe

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    The Aukus submarine deal will proceed as planned after reportedly surviving the Pentagon’s review of the security pact.The Japan-based Nikkei Asia reported the Trump administration would retain the original timeline for the $368bn program, which includes the US selling three Virginia-class nuclear-powered submarines to Australia from 2032.A US Department of Defense official would not confirm the report when contacted by Guardian Australia.“The Aukus initiative is still under review. We have no further Aukus updates to announce at this time,” the official said.Sign up: AU Breaking News emailThe prime minister, Anthony Albanese, acknowledged the review was still under way but was confident Aukus had the support of the US and the UK – the third partner in the pact.“We know that Aukus is in the interests of Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States,” Albanese said from Abu Dhabi, the last stop in an overseas trip that has included visits to the two Aukus allies.“It is about a partnership which is in the interest of all three nations which will make peace and security in our region so much stronger.”The review will be wrapped up before Albanese’s first scheduled face-to-face meeting with Donald Trump in the US on 20 October, Nikkei Asia reported.The future of Aukus has been under a cloud since the Pentagon launched an appraisal of the deal to determine if it aligned with Trump’s “America-first” agenda.The review has been conducted by the US under secretary of defense for policy, Elbridge Colby, who has previously expressed scepticism about any deal that could weaken the US navy.One of the most significant concerns over Aukus in the US is its capacity to spare any nuclear-powered submarines to sell to Australia as it struggles to build enough for its own needs.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThere has also been speculation the US has wanted clarity from Australia about how it respond in a potential US-China war over Taiwan.The federal government has already handed over $1.6bn to the US to support America’s shipbuilding capacity, with delivery of the first Virginia-class submarines to Australia in the early 2030s contingent on the US ramping up production.Australia’s government has never publicly expressed concern about the Pentagon review, arguing that it was standard procedure for a new administration to examine such an agreement, just as the UK did after a change of government.Earlier on Tuesday, Australia’s defence minister, Richard Marles, would not pre-empt the outcome of the Pentagon review but again expressed confidence that the deal was secure.“Aukus is happening – that’s not in question,” the acting prime minister told ABC Melbourne on Tuesday morning.“We’re very confident about the deal and we’ve been saying that all the way through, as we have also been saying that we welcome this review and will participate in it,” Marles said on Tuesday.“I’ve repeatedly said Aukus is going well; Aukus is happening at a pace; it is meeting all the milestones that it’s meant to be meeting and we are confident about this being the pathway for Australia acquiring its future submarine capability.”The US has also been pushing Australia to raise its overall defence spending to 3.5% of GDP, up from its current level of roughly 2%.Albanese has publicly resisted that pressure, insisting Australia will determine the nature and volume of its military spending.The federal government has made several new defence spending commitments while the review was under way, including $12bn to upgrade a Western Australian shipyard that will be used by the Aukus submarines.Albanese and Marles have confirmed the US navy will be able to use the Henderson defence precinct to dock and maintain its own ships. More

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      A US fascism expert’s warning to Australia: ‘You guys are probably next’

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      It’s a warm autumn evening and Jason Stanley is walking through downtown Toronto, his home of a fortnight, discussing his view that America is sliding into fascism, and its global and historical parallels.“But the far right is everywhere,” he tells the Guardian. “There is a chill of fear everywhere.”As if on cue, a man emerges walking in the opposite direction wearing a bright red T-shirt bearing the slogan “Canada First”, a nationalist political movement promoting the mass deportation of migrants.“You can feel the sense of threat,” Stanley says. “Fascism begins with immigrants and national minorities, and it moves quickly to political opponents.”The trend is a global one, Stanley argues; the United States is just further down the path than other places. It is descending more quickly – and, as the events of past days have shown, more violently.When we speak, it is a week since rightwing provocateur Charlie Kirk was murdered at a university campus in Utah. In the days since, Kirk’s death has been weaponised by some supporters to attack political opponents. In an address from the Oval Office, the US president, Donald Trump, specifically blamed “radical left political violence” for Kirk’s death.View image in fullscreenA website has been established to dox anyone the site’s creators believe has “celebrated” Kirk’s assassination, or made comments they deem insufficiently orthodox on his legacy. People’s names, phone numbers, home addresses and places of work have been listed online, accompanied by threats and acts of violence.A thread on X is celebrating people losing their jobs for making comments about Kirk’s death: the thread lists dozens of cases of journalists, teachers, even hamburger cooks and Secret Service agents, summarily fired.“And JD Vance, the vice president of the United States, has encouraged ordinary citizens to report people for their negative comments about Charlie Kirk,” Stanley says.“That was a real signal saying, ‘We’re going to police your speech at every level’ … It’s a terror campaign against ordinary citizens’ speech.”Stanley made global headlines in March this year when, as a Yale professor specialising in the study of fascism, he announced he was leaving the US because he believed it was at risk of becoming a “fascist dictatorship”.View image in fullscreenNow a fortnight into his exile, he says he is not surprised by the worsening political climate in the US, “but it’s always terrifying when it comes”.He does not regret the move, arguing he can “fight better” from outside the US.“Right now, walking through the streets of Toronto, I feel safe. Given that the president of the United States said we’re going to target the people who call us fascists and Nazis, I probably wouldn’t feel safe in the United States. A lot of people don’t feel safe in the United States.”There is historical resonance, too, in Stanley’s exile from a rising tide of fascism. His German Jewish forebears, including both his parents and grandmother (who rescued more than 400 Jews from concentration camps) fled a Nazi regime that had them marked for extermination.As we speak, Stanley is partway through writing an article on America’s current moment, drawing from his grandmother’s memoir of the Kristallnacht, a Nazi-coordinated, nationwide antisemitic riot in 1938.View image in fullscreenHe cites a quote (mis)attributed most often to Mark Twain: “History doesn’t repeat, but it rhymes.”“I find myself asking: ‘Is this moment exactly Kristallnacht? Is it exactly the Reichstag fire?’ It’s like it’s these jigsaw puzzles … it’s a piece of one and a piece of another.”Stanley says he sees elements of Kristallnacht in the current conflagration after Kirk’s killing – the tumult exploited to expand the target of hostility from immigrants to political opponents.There is parallel too, he says, in the militarisation of the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (Ice) – echoes of the Sturmabteilung, Ernst Röhm’s feared brownshirts.Much of the US’s political upheaval is idiosyncratic to its own history and political moment, but Australia, far distant, perhaps, with a different political culture, is not immune from a descent into fascism, Stanley insists.View image in fullscreenIn fact, he argues, Australia’s history makes it acutely vulnerable to precisely that.“You guys are probably next, right? The first domino to go.“You guys had a White Australia policy until the 1970s. That’s a terrible sign. And you attacked your universities ages ago.”Stanley cites, as well, Australia’s history of Indigenous displacement, its “performatively vicious” treatment of asylum seekers and the fierce “anti-woke” rhetoric that pierces public discourse.“A lot of what you’re seeing in the United States must seem familiar to you, even though you’ve come nowhere close to what we’ve seen in the last few months; but the ideological preconditions are certainly familiar to you.”The response to this might be that Australia has just re-elected a centre-left government with a commanding majority, rejecting anti-immigration rhetoric and division to such an extent that the leader of the opposition – who ran on these campaign platforms – didn’t just lose the election, but his own seat in parliament.Australia’s institutions, too, can be argued to be more robust: the public service and judiciary are far less politicised, voting is independently overseen and compulsory (driving parties towards a more moderate centrism), political violence is rare (and not fuelled by a firearm epidemic).But Stanley points out that fascism often comes cloaked in the language, the institutions and the processes of democracy: an insidiousness that lies in seeking to appear democratic.“Fascism conceals its anti-democratic nature by representing itself as the general will of the people, where ‘the people’ are the dominant racial or religious group.“It will say ‘the majority of people want this’, but that’s not the core idea of democracy. The core idea of democracy is not the tyranny of the majority. Democracy is a system based on freedom and equality.”Fascism is not a binary question either, nor one of an absolute threshold. Democracy and fascism are concepts that exist on a spectrum – a country can be more or less democratic, more or less fascist.“Yes, the United States is quite fascist now. It’s much less of a democracy. But, officially, at least, the United States is a democracy living under an emergency.“And this emergency allows the government to scoop people up into unmarked vans; perhaps you can stay indefinitely as a democracy under emergency?”View image in fullscreenA nation’s slide into fascism carries obvious consequence for the nation itself, but Stanley argues that when the country in question possesses the strongest military on Earth, is the global superpower and dominates international politics, it carries immense ramifications for the entire world.“It normalises and legitimates fascist movements everywhere,” Stanley argues. “So you’re going to see more of that dynamic, I suspect. All the remaining democratic countries are going to face surging anti-democratic, ultranationalist movements.”For Australia, the consequence of America’s descent is particularly acute.Since the end of the second world war, Australia has depended on the United States for its defence and security (including sheltering under its nuclear umbrella). The postwar “international rules-based order” (to use the parlance so loved by Australia’s foreign policy establishment) is, some argue, more accurately characterised as a US imperialist one.But Australia’s “great and powerful friend” (another particularly Australian foreign policy nomenclature) is no longer a reliable or consistent ally. Perhaps it never was, only now it is more nakedly so.Trump’s second administration has an exposed record of treating allies with worse than indifference – rather with contempt.Here, Stanley has perhaps his strongest note of caution. “Undoing fascism is very, very hard,” he says. Democracy is not some natural default.“We shouldn’t be surprised if, very soon, there are no more democracies, or very few. Democracy wasn’t a thing for a long time: we had monarchies and we had empires, and other forms of government, but we’re now in a situation where India, Russia, the United States and China are not democratic countries. So you have to ask: what will remain?” More

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      Australian politicians rally behind ABC journalist after clash with Donald Trump

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      Australia’s politicians have thrown their support behind an ABC journalist who was berated by Donald Trump after asking questions about the US president’s personal business dealings in Washington DC on Tuesday.Trump was answering questions on the White House lawn when he clashed with the ABC’s Americas editor, John Lyons, who said he was reporting for Four Corners.The exchange also appeared to include Trump’s first confirmation he would meet Anthony Albanese for their first face-to-face talks, as part of the PM’s visit to the UN general assembly next week.Lyons asked Trump how much wealthier he had become since returning to the Oval Office for his second term in January, noting that he was regarded as the wealthiest man to occupy the White House.Sign up: AU Breaking News email“I don’t know,” Trump said, explaining that his children were responsible for the family business, the Trump Organization.“But most of the deals that I’ve made were made before,” he said. “This is what I’ve done for a life. I’ve built buildings.”He pointed to the site of a grand ballroom planned for the White House.Lyons then asked whether it was appropriate for a US president to be conducting personal business while in office. “I’m really not, my kids are running the business,” Trump said before asking Lyons where he was from.Trump then accused Lyons of “hurting Australia” with the line of questioning. “In my opinion, you are hurting Australia very much right now. And they want to get along with me.“You know, your leader is coming over to see me very soon. I’m going to tell him about you. You set a very bad tone.“You can set a nicer tone,” Trump said, before telling Lyons: “Quiet.”Australia’s treasurer, Jim Chalmers, said Lyons was “just doing his job”.“I respect the ABC and I respect its independence and that extends to not second-guessing the questions asked legitimately by journalists,” he said.Lyons told the ABC his questions had been “perfectly normal,” describing them as fair, based on research and not asked in an abusive fashion.“If we’ve reached the point where asking those sort of questions prevents you from going into the White House, then I think it’s a very dark day,” he said. “I’ve still got to brace myself for what happens when he tells on me.”David Pocock, an independent senator, called for stronger defences of press freedom and mocked Trump.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“That doesn’t include the leader of another country thinking he can report journos to our PM for asking hard questions,” he posted on X.The Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young said Trump was trying to bully the media and Australia, and demanded Albanese stand up to criticism of Australian journalists.The Liberal senator Sarah Henderson called for the ABC to explain Lyons’ line of questioning, given the importance of trade, defence and national security matters to the Australia-US relationship. Bridget McKenzie, a Nationals frontbencher, defended Lyons.“There’s nothing wrong with journalists asking tough questions,” McKenzie said.Albanese has been seeking a meeting with Trump since the pair’s first talks were abruptly cancelled at the G7 summit in Canada in June. His schedule for the upcoming visit to New York is yet to be confirmed but Australian officials are trying to lock in a time.This week Albanese said he would see Trump at the meeting of world leaders in New York, as well at upcoming international summits.“We’ll see each other in New York,” the prime minister said. “He is hosting a reception on Tuesday night of next week. As well, we’ll see each other at various forums that are taking place between now and the end of the year. It’s summit season.”The meeting is expected to cover urgent issues in the bilateral relationship, including the Pentagon’s review of the Aukus nuclear submarines agreement and Trump’s demands that Australia spend more on defence.Trump and senior US officials have privately urged Australia to commit to spending as much as 3.5% of GDP on defence, a potential $30bn annual increase to the defence spend of about $59bn.The Aukus review – which is being led by the undersecretary of defence and Aukus sceptic, Elbridge Colby – is due to be completed around November. Australia has sent about $1.6bn to the US as part of the agreement. More

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      Scott Morrison tells US Australia risks going to sleep on China threat after diplomatic ‘charm and flattery’

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      The Chinese Communist party hopes Western democracies “go to sleep on the threat” it poses to the international order, former prime minister Scott Morrison has told a congressional committee in the US.In a forthright appearance before the hawkish US House of Representatives select committee on the strategic competition between the United States and the Chinese Communist party, Morrison said China had changed diplomatic tack after he lost the 2022 election to Anthony Albanese.“This included abandoning their economic and diplomatic bullying and coercion for more inductive engagement, laced with charm and flattery,” Morrison said. “That said, the PRC still continues to engage in intimidatory behaviour by their military against Australia when it suits them without remorse.”Morrison said while China’s diplomatic tactics had changed, its objectives were unaltered: to isolate US influence in the Indo-Pacific and weaken efforts at countering Beijing’s “potential security threat”.He said Australia should boost its defence spending to the 3.5% of GDP demanded of it by the US, arguing “the world has changed” and that Chinese leaders sought to “recast the world order to accommodate their illiberal objectives”.Morrison accused the current Labor government of scrimping on defence spending in order to pay for the Aukus submarine deal, which will cost $358bn to the 2050s.Morrison later told reporters Australian defence spending parsimony – in particular the “displacement” of funds to prioritise Aukus – had been raised by the US in its review of the agreement.Sign up: AU Breaking News email“It wasn’t [meant to be] ‘Aukus instead’, it was ‘Aukus as well’,” he said. “And ‘Aukus as well’ was at least going to add another half a percent of GDP, at least.”Morrison said Australia should raise its defence spending to 3% of GDP by 2030 and 3.5% by 2035. The government spends a little over 2% of GDP on defence currently, with forecasts to lift that to 2.3% by 2033. To prioritise Aukus, significant cuts have reportedly been made to defence programs, training budgets and to senior defence ranks.Australia has already paid $1.6bn to the US as part of the Aukus agreement. However, the future of the massive nuclear submarine deal remains uncertain as the Pentagon undertakes a review to ensure it does not weaken US naval capacity or diminish America’s force posture to contain China.Morrison, whose leadership between 2018 and 2022 endured a low in relations with Beijing, told the committee it was vital for western nations to resist Chinese attempts to interfere in politics and curb free speech.Citing polling of Australians by the Lowy Institute, the former prime minister told US lawmakers that “for the first time in quite a number of years there is a greater value on the economic partnership with China than concerns about the security threat”.“That is an objective of the CCP [Chinese communist party], that western democracies go to sleep on the threat,” Morrison said.“You need to build the internal resilience, and that means an appreciation of the potential threat. And that is somewhat in jeopardy in Australia.”Morrison said the liberal world order faced a “rising threat from authoritarian states who, not content with absolute control over their own populations to preserve their regimes, also seek hegemonic control over their own regions and to recast the world order to accommodate their illiberal objectives”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“The Chinese Communist party government of the People’s Republic of China is such a regime.”And Morrison said Western countries were “kidding themselves” if they thought dialogue would change Beijing’s pursuit of their objectives.“A free and open Indo-Pacific – that is a threat and a challenge to regime security in China,” he said.“Discussion is fine, engagement is good – it’s better than the alternative. But if we think that is going to produce change in the mindset of Beijing then we’re frankly kidding ourselves.”Appearing alongside Morrison before the committee hearing was Rahm Emanuel, formerly president Barack Obama’s chief of staff, mayor of Chicago and US ambassador to Japan. Emanuel is widely considered to be a leading Democratic contender contemplating a run for the White House in 2028.He argued the US – in a significant shift from the Trump administration’s “America First” doctrine – should lead a strong “anti-coercion coalition” along with allies like Australia to counter Beijing’s growing influence.He cited China’s trade sanctions on beef, wine and barley, imposed after Australia led calls for an inquiry into the origins of Covid-19, as examples of economic coercion, China’s most “pernicious and persistent tool”.“Australia is the best kind of blueprint of what you want to replicate worldwide. They did it on their own,” Emanuel said. “And China realised they couldn’t isolate Australia.” More

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      in US Politics

      Cables and notes reveal UK view on Howard’s personality, Australia’s part in Kyoto ‘awkward squad’ and an aborted cricket match

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      Plus ça change. At the turn of the millennium, Australia was in the throes of “one of its periodic bouts of angst over its place in the Asia-Pacific and the wider world”. It was doubting the reliability of its ally the US, wrestling with the issue of Indigenous reconciliation, and attracting criticism for its lack of commitment to addressing the climate crisis.And it was trying to organise a game of cricket against the English.Just released papers from Britain’s National Archives shed light on intergovernmental correspondence between the governments of Australia and the UK before a prime ministerial visit to London in 2000 to mark Australia Week, and the centenary of the Australian constitution.Correspondence between the governments of the conservative prime minister John Howard and the UK Labour leader Tony Blair reveal a suite of problems still being grappled with in Australia a quarter of a century later.“Personality notes” written for Blair describe Howard as a leader who had “started well” as prime minister, particularly on gun control after the Port Arthur massacre, but who “appeared to lose his way” during his first term. Importantly for the UK, it saw Howard as an “instinctive monarchist … well-disposed towards Britain”. The sketch says Howard was a “strong family man”, significantly influenced by his wife, Janette, that he was a “fanatical follower” of cricket, and a “great admirer” of Sir Winston Churchill and Mahatma Gandhi.In a scene-setting cable dated June 2000 prepared for Blair, the UK high commissioner noted: “Australia is going through one of its periodic bouts of angst over its place in the Asia-Pacific and the wider world”.It said Australia took “enormous national pride” in its intervention in Timor-Leste the year before (despite significant damage to its relationship with Indonesia), saying that the Australian-led peacekeeping mission “raised Australia’s stock in Asia”.

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      However, “critics argue that it simply hardened a view widely held in Asia that Australia is ambivalent, even antagonist, towards Asia”.Timor-Leste, the cable noted, had also strained Canberra’s relations with Washington DC.“The [US’s] perceived reluctance to assist Australia is seen as an indication that the US could not be relied on automatically in circumstances that are of little interest to it.“More broadly, some are doubting that the US will retain interest in the alliance unless Australia increases its commitment, in terms of defence spending.“The litmus test is Taiwan: having to choose between the US and China is the nightmare scenario on Australia’s strategic and diplomatic horizon. Few doubt Australia would choose the US but the calculations are becoming less clearcut.”In 2025, the US defense secretary has insisted Australia lift defence spending to 3.5% of its GDP, while Trump administration officials have demanded assurances from Australia it would support the US in any conflict over Taiwan.On climate, Blair was briefed that although Australia had signed the Kyoto protocol to cut emissions, it had not ratified the treaty.The British government suspected Howard would not raise the matter during the two leaders’ meeting.“If Howard doesn’t mention it, you should raise climate change,” Blair’s brief states. “The Australians are in the awkward squad on Kyoto (alongside eg the Russians and the US): you should tell Howard how important we think the issues are, and encourage Australia to do more.”In the quarter-century since, Australian governments have been consistently criticised internationally for failing to adequately address the climate crisis. A federal court judge last week found previous Australian governments had “paid scant, if any, regard to the best available science” in setting emissions reductions targets.Other files reveal concern within Blair’s government about an Indigenous delegation that visited the UK in late 1999.Leading the delegation was Patrick Dodson, a Yawuru elder and later senator, often referred to as the “father of reconciliation”. During the same trip, he met Queen Elizabeth II as part of a larger effort to foster reconciliation.However, a memo written by Blair’s foreign affairs adviser, John Sawers, reflects angst within the prime minister’s office about a proposed meeting with the delegation, referring to an apparent intervention by the then Australian high commissioner, Philip Flood.“The Australians are pretty wound up about the idea of you seeing the Aborigines at all,” Sawers wrote to Blair. “Their high commissioner rang me to press you not to see them: they were troublemakers – it would be like [the then Australian prime minister] John Howard seeing people from Northern Ireland who were trying to stir up problems for the UK.”The memo suggested: “Can’t we plead diary problems?” The word “yes” is written in answer to this, in handwriting that resembles Blair’s.A quarter-century later, Dodson was a key advocate for an Indigenous voice to parliament, put to Australians in a referendum in 2023. The voice proposal was ultimately defeated.Also within the National Archives files is a prescient document from the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) to the UK High Commission in Canberra. It reflects on a visit from a “rising star in the Australian Labor party and a useful contact for the FCO”.The “rising star” had reflected on Australia’s place in its region (and was summarised by an FCO official): “There were two main problems to Australia being part of Asia: a large slice of the region did not accept them, probably because of a common experience of European occupation – and Australia were too white; and Australians saw themselves as Australians rather than Asian, or indeed Europeans or Americans.”The visitor’s name was Kevin Rudd, the man who in 2007 would replace Howard as the next prime minister of Australia.As the 2000 Australia Week visit from prime minister Howard approached, a flurry of correspondence between the two governments sought to put the finishing touches to the trip. The files contain flight details, hotel bookings, and to-the-minute travel arrangements. There are discussions of trumpet fanfares and processional routes.One idea ultimately discarded was a cricket match proposed by Howard, to be played between Australian and English XIs at a ground near Chequers, the British prime ministerial country house.“The teams could, perhaps, consist of one or two current Test players, a recently retired great cricketer or two, with the balance being young players of promise.”Blair’s private secretary, Philip Barton, wrote in a memo to the UK prime minister: “I suspect the last thing you will want to do is go to a cricket match on the Saturday. But if we just say no, this would no doubt come out and you would look unsporting.”Barton proposed getting former Tory prime minister John Major, an avowed cricket fan, to raise an XI on Blair’s behalf, “but it may not be enough to stop the prime minister having to go to at least the start of the match”. A third option was to “turn it into a charity match”.The match did not go ahead. More

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      Trump, Lutnick and the Shark: key players in the US-Australia tariff tussle

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      Australia, like countries all over the world, now faces the invidious task of negotiating a way around the US’s new tariff wall, finding a way into the good graces of an administration that has proven itself capricious, especially with allies.The 10% tariff rate imposed on all Australian imports has not been paused and Australia’s negotiating position is complicated by a federal election: the government is in caretaker mode, and those seeking to “make a deal” may not have that responsibility next month.But beyond Australia’s own uncertainty, in dealing with the US there is the question of with whom to negotiate.Trade officials and diplomats agree Australia needs to bring discipline and unity to negotiations with a US administration that is its opposite.Multiple sources on both sides of the Pacific say the president is most swayed by the “last voice in the room”, underscoring the imperative for Australia to present a consistent message to the key figures who might have the president’s ear.

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      If it needed further demonstration, the week has showcased the unvarnished reality of an erratic global superpower. In an administration so unpredictable, where does the first phone call go and who has the final say?Key players in the US tariff regimeDonald TrumpPresident of the United StatesView image in fullscreenThe extraordinary “liberation day” announcement was just the beginning: a comprehensive global tariff regime (with some notable exceptions) triggered a stock market crash, followed by the announcement of a 90-day pause on (almost) all tariffs, which saw the stock market soaring and then sinking again, followed by an escalation with China.China has been hit with an increased tariff of 145%, while other tariffs will be “paused” – reduced to the 10% “baseline” rate imposed on Australia, the UK and others.Despite Australia having a free-trade agreement (ratified in 2005) and running a trade deficit with the US (a surplus from the American position), Trump’s position is Australia deserves to be hit with tariffs because of trade barriers he regards as protectionist.“Australia bans – and they’re wonderful people and wonderful everything – but they ban American beef. And, you know, I don’t blame them, but we’re doing the same thing right now, starting at midnight tonight,” he said on 3 April.Despite extraordinary financial tumult in the days since, Trump told a fundraising dinner this week the tariffs were working as a negotiating tool to bend other countries to his will. He said in the wake of the tariff announcement – but before they’d come into effect and crashed the stock market – that he’d been flooded with entreaties from foreign leaders.“These countries are calling me up, kissing my ass, [saying] ‘Make a deal, please, please, sir, make a deal, I’ll do anything, I’ll do anything, sir.’”Howard LutnickUS secretary of commerceView image in fullscreenThe famously combative Lutnick (the New Republic ran a piece this week headlined Everybody Hates Howard Lutnick), has been a key spear-carrier for Trump’s tariff regime, though his own views on their effectiveness are said to be “more nuanced” than his regular television appearances would suggest.Lutnick has singled out Australia for criticism over its trading relationship with the US.“Our farmers are blocked from selling almost anywhere. Europe won’t let us sell beef, Australia won’t let us sell beef,” Lutnick told a television interview. He dismissed Australian arguments the beef restriction was made for biosecurity reasons.“This is nonsense. This is all nonsense. What happens is they block our markets.”Lutnick told Fox News he was in the room week when Trump offered an olive branch of potential “bespoke” negotiations – country by country – to dismantle the tariff walls.“They started calling and making real offers, finally, finally really digging in and understanding how they treat the US unfairly and really offering us a clear path to where we could do really good deals with these countries.”Trump has put a 90-day pause on the imposition of tariffs above 10%, except on China. Beijing’s refusal to countenance negotiation, Lutnick said, meant it was treated with the opposite to a pause on tariffs: further tariff hikes – to 145% – a rate so high it is, in practice, effectively a trade embargo.“Donald Trump is the best negotiator that there is.”Peter NavarroDirector of the office of trade and manufacturing policyView image in fullscreenThe man who went to jail rather than give evidence to Congress about the January 6 insurrection is also a fierce advocate for the president’s tariff regime and an equally vociferous critic of Australia.He singled out aluminium imports from Australia as being exploitative.“The era of unchecked imports undermining American industry is over,” he wrote in USA Today. “The United States will no longer be a dumping ground for heavily subsidised and unfairly traded aluminum.”Navarro compared Australia to “strategic competitors” China and Russia.“Nations considered US allies also have been a big part of the problem. Consider Australia. Its heavily subsidised smelters operate below cost, giving them an unfair dumping advantage, while Australia’s close ties to China further distort global aluminum trade.”Navarro has argued Trump’s tariff regime would end the unfair exploitation of the US.“Australia is just killing our aluminum market,” he told CNN. “President Trump says, ‘No, no we’re not doing that any more.’”He accused Australia of “flooding” the US market, “killing” it and leaving the American domestic industry “on its back”.In 2024 Australian aluminium accounted for less than 2% of US aluminium imports.Navarro has previously quoted a fictional character, Ron Vara – an anagram of his own surname – as a source of economic wisdom. Elon Musk this week said Navarro was “dumber than a sack of bricks”.Jamieson GreerUS trade representativeView image in fullscreenHis office produces an annual barriers to trade report, which for 2025 singled out Australian biosecurity laws, the pharmaceutical benefits scheme and social media regulation as unfair Australian trade practices.Greer has been, along with Lutnick and Navarro, a spear-carrier for the tariff regime.Under questioning before the Senate finance committee, Greer said that, despite a free-trade agreement, Australia harmed US through non-tariff trade barriers.“We’re addressing the $1.2tn deficit – the largest in human history – that President [Joe] Biden left us with. We should be running up the score against Australia.“Despite the agreement, they ban our beef, they ban our pork. They’re getting ready to impose measures on our digital companies.”Greer also told the committee: “Australia has the lowest rate available under the new program.”This is not correct.Russia, Belarus, North Korea and Cuba were all exempted from the tariff regime.Administration insistence that Russia was exempted because it does no “meaningful trade” with the US are also not correct.According to statistics from Greer’s own office, Russia did $3.5bn worth of trade in 2024.Mark WarnerSenator for VirginiaView image in fullscreenThe Democratic senator was the man questioning Greer in the Senate finance committee.“On Australia, we have a trade surplus with Australia, we have a free-trade agreement, they are an incredibly important national security partner – why were they whacked with a tariff?”When Greer responded that Australia imposed biosecurity bans on some US meats and plans to regulate American tech giants, Warner was livid in riposte.“Sir, you’re a much smarter person than that answer: the idea that we are going to whack friend and foe alike, and particularly friends with this level, is both, I think, insulting the Australians, undermines our national security and, frankly, makes us not a good partner going forward.”Joe CourtneyCo-chair of the Congressional Friends of Australia CaucusView image in fullscreenA longtime advocate for Australia and its alliance with the US (rewarded with an Order of Australia for his services, no less), Courtney has described the tariffs imposed on Australia as an “insult”.“Australia is a key strategic ally for our country. They are positioned in the Indo-Pacific at a place where, again, tensions are sky high,” Courtney said.“Instead, what we’re seeing is a completely needless, almost insult to the people of Australia by raising tariffs on Australian products coming into this country.”Greg NormanAustralian former golferView image in fullscreenThe two-time major winner, who dined with Anthony Albanese on “liberation day” eve, has said he is willing to once again act as a diplomatic conduit between Australia and Trump personally. The US president, a lover of golf, has played regular rounds with the former world No 1.In 2016 Norman reportedly passed on Trump’s personal phone number to the then Australian prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, after Trump unexpectedly won the US presidential election but couldn’t be contacted by the Australian government.“If I can give one tiny bit of help that can help going forward between our two nations, I would do it,” he said last month. “I’ve done it in the past; I would do it again.”Norman said Trump was aware of the significance of the US-Australia relationship.“He understands the extremely tight connection between Australia and the US, [which] I call big brother-little brother, that’s how I worded it with him. And I said the importance of that has been decades and decades old, and it’s not going to go anywhere.” More

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      US accuses Australia of breaking ‘verbal commitment’ on aluminium exports as Trump weighs tariffs exemption

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      Donald Trump has called Australia’s prime minister a “very fine man” and said he would give “great consideration” to exempting the country from his new 25% tariffs on steel and aluminium imports, after a phone call between the two leaders.It came after comments on Tuesday from the US president that there would be no exceptions or exemptions on the tariffs, which will start on 12 March unless Anthony Albanese can secure an exemption.The official proclamation to impose the aluminium tariff appeared to explain why Australia was not exempted from the outset, with the US accusing Australia of breaking a “verbal commitment” to limit aluminium exports.

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      The new proclamation read: “The volume of U.S. imports of primary aluminum from Australia has also surged and in 2024 was approximately 103% higher than the average volume for 2015 through 2017. Australia has disregarded its verbal commitment to voluntarily restrain its aluminum exports to a reasonable level.”Former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull negotiated a carve out from steel and aluminium tariffs during Trump’s first term.Asked about the proclamation on Tuesday night, the deputy prime minister and defence minister, Richard Marles, told ABC’s 7.30: “I can’t speak for the former government, in terms of what it did or didn’t do … but in the discussion that was had today, in the president’s own press conference, having signed the executive order, he made clear that Australian exemptions to this order would be under active consideration. And that’s where this is now at.”Earlier on Tuesday, Albanese said his second call with Trump had been a “very positive and constructive discussion”, which canvassed the Aukus defence pact, critical minerals and foreign investment between the two countries.Albanese said he had also made the case for Australia to be exempted from tariffs and was hopeful of such an outcome.“If you have a look at what we’ve achieved already, it’s been a tremendous start to the relationship,” Albanese told a press conference in Parliament House.Minutes later, the White House announced that the president was signing executive orders to place a 25% tariff on the imports, stepping up a long-promised trade war.Trump initially said the tariffs would be imposed without exceptions but then confirmed he was giving “great consideration” to an Australian carve-out.Asked about his call with Albanese, Trump called the Australian leader “a very fine man” and noted the US trade surplus with Australia.“We have a surplus with Australia, one of the few … I told him that [exemptions] is something we will give great consideration,” Trump said.The opposition leader, Peter Dutton, also publicly urged the Trump administration to exempt Australia from tariffs, claiming any move to the contrary would “damage the relationship” between the two countries.“Tariffs are not warranted against Australia because we have a trade surplus,” he said.Australian politicians were rocked on Monday when Trump told reporters in the US that he planned to announce new tariffs on all steel and aluminium arriving in America.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe Labor government been bracing for such a decision after Trump levelled similar tariffs in his first term, with senior ministers and officials working behind the scenes for some time to secure exemptions like those secured by the then-Coalition government after months of negotiations in 2018.“Our aluminium is a critical input for manufacturing in the United States,” Albanese said on Tuesday after his call with Trump. “Our steel and aluminium are both key inputs for the US-Australia defence industries in both of our countries.“I presented Australia’s case for an exemption and we agreed on wording to say publicly, which is that the US president agreed that an exemption was under consideration in the interests of both of our countries.”Albanese would not reveal more about the process by which the exemption would be considered, the timeline by which a decision would be reached, or what Australia would do if the exemption was ultimately rejected. He said he would not speak for Trump but again referred warmly to the Australia-US relationship.“What I envisage is continuing to act to respond diplomatically,” he said. “That’s how you get things done. My government’s got a record of getting things done in Australia’s national interest. I’ll continue to do so.”A US congressman has hit out at any attempt to slap tariffs on Australian products.Joe Courtney, a Democratic politician and co-chair of the Friends of Australia Caucus,, noted that Australia had just this week begun sending payments to Washington as part of the Aukus pact to help bolster the US submarine construction program.“What we’re seeing is a completely needless, almost insult to the people of Australia by raising tariffs of Australian products coming into this country,” Courtney said.The shadow trade minister, Kevin Hogan, suggested that the government should “reach out to whoever may help” Australia secure exemptions, including the former Coalition politicians Scott Morrison and Joe Hockey.“I encourage the prime minister and indeed ambassador [Kevin] Rudd to talk to people like Morrison, people like Hockey,” he told the ABC. “We had a precedent when we got an exemption, they should be using those resources.” More

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      Kevin Rudd will remain as Australia’s ambassador to US, Anthony Albanese says

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      Anthony Albanese says Kevin Rudd will remain as Australia’s ambassador to Washington despite the apparent disquiet about Rudd’s past commentary on president-elect Donald Trump among some in Trump’s inner circle.Albanese is digging in against media speculation that Trump could demand Rudd’s withdrawal or that others in his administration could make the ambassador’s position untenable, insisting he will stay in the job no matter what.“That’s what we’d expect,” he told ABC’s Insiders program on Sunday.

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      “He’s Australia’s appointment,” Albanese said, speaking from the Apec summit in Peru. “And it says something about the importance of the United States that we have appointed a former prime minister. That’s a sign of how seriously we take this relationship, which is a relationship between our peoples based upon our common values.”Albanese declined to say whether Rudd should apologise for past remarks, which included social media posts calling him “the most destructive president in history” and a 2021 interview in which he described Trump in a 2021 interview as “the village idiot” and “not a leading intellectual force”.“We’re focused on the future, and I’m sure President Trump will be as well, and that is the important thing,” Albanese said.The emergence last week of video of the 2021 remarks this week coincided with a social media post from Trump’s now newly appointed deputy chief of staff, Dan Scavino, depicting sand running through an hourglass, above a screenshot of the congratulatory message Rudd had issued about Trump’s election win.But Albanese said Rudd had been doing “a terrific job” and would continue in the role.He praised the former prime minister’s work building bipartisan relationships and boosting Australia’s ties in the US capital.“Ambassador, Rudd has been working with people across the political spectrum. He attended both the Republican and the Democrat national conventions and engaged with people across the board. I know that he was in regular contact with the head of the Republican campaign committee as well, as well as the Democrats.”In a separate interview with Sky News, also from Peru, Albanese said his 10-minute congratulatory phone conversation with Trump had been “very constructive and positive” and Rudd was not mentioned.“He’s Australia’s ambassador to Washington, and he’s doing a very important job,” Albanese said. “The work that he did with Aukus was a difficult task to get that through the Congress and the Senate. But when I was there, one of the things that struck me was just how extensive the links that Kevin Rudd had developed at the US, Congress and the Senate were.” More