IPAN stands for peaceful independent foreign policies. We oppose AUKUS and the US military embedding its forces and capability on our territory.
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At the start of his second term, history is rhyming. Trump has again lauded Xi Jinping and given the Chinese-owned app TikTok a reprieve from a ban in the US that he initially supported and for which Rubio voted.
The honeymoon is likely to be over soon, once Trump starts adding new tariffs. In the longer term, however, his China policy is anyone’s guess. “Everyone has been trying to work out what Trump will do on China policy, but no one has any clue,” says one Washington insider.
On AUKUS – the policy area most sensitive to Australia – Trump and Rubio could well be aligned.
Senior Australian politicians and officials have long believed AUKUS is an easy sell to Trump. Their pitch is along these lines: the US has the best submarines in the world – not only does Australia want to buy them but we are investing in US industrial capacity to make them.
These arguments, combined with Australia’s large trade deficit with the US, hit Trump’s political sweet spot in a way few countries can replicate.
But Scott Morrison – who signed on to AUKUS as prime minister – may have been onto something when he told The Australian late last year that Washington wanted more from Canberra.
Supporting the project and promoting its contribution to industry policy, as Prime Minister Anthony Albanese does, will not be enough. Rubio will likely also expect Australia to publicly tie it to US strategy on China.
Morrison has told The Australian that Republicans in particular support AUKUS “because it is a very successful partnership to provide a military deterrent to their biggest strategic rival”. He said the Australian government should “own” that fact, and “if owning it means the Chinese don’t like it, well, too bad”.
Peter Dutton will readily support this stance, but the Albanese government is unlikely to, having deliberately lowered the rhetoric on China.
Though the atmospherics of the US–Australia relationship are overshadowed by Trump’s antics, in reality it is dominated by the day-to-day interactions between diplomatic, defence and intelligence officials in both countries.