Open Australia versus closed United States
Beyond trade and tariff turmoil, Donald Trump pushes at the three core elements of Australia’s international policy: the US alliance, the region and multilateralism.
What Kevin Rudd called the ‘three fundamental pillars’ are the heart of Australia’s foreign policy consensus.
Even Robert Menzies had versions of those pillars in his policy Parthenon. The consensus dates from the dark days of World War II, when the United States stepped up to perform the vital role Menzies defined as the ‘great and powerful friend’.
The eight-decade lineage means Australia is not about to give up on alliance, region and multilateralism as expressions of our interests, history and geography. But Trump alters Australia’s understanding of what the pillars can support.
The scope of region has grown from the South Pacific and East Asia to become the Asia-Pacific, and now the Indo-Pacific. The sorry state of the United Nations means multilateralism offers a rules-based order where rules rupture and order buckles. The US ‘is turning against the liberal international order that it once forged’, Chatham House argues, drawing on its research for the US National Intelligence Council. The alliance has deep roots in the dire days of 1942 when Washington made General Douglas MacArthur commander in the Southwest Pacific, instructing him to repel the Asian invader and hold ‘the key military bases of Australia as bases for future offensive action’.
The treaty expression of the alliance, ANZUS, now in its eighth decade, rests on a promise to consult about military threats. Thus, while NATO is shocked to sense Trump-sized holes in the promise of automatic military response to attacks, Australia has always understood the contingent nature of ‘consult’, all that ANZUS actually compels the signatories to do in case of security threats. The embrace of the alliance totem by Menzies raises three implicit questions about any US administration: How great? How powerful? How friendly?
Trump has changed the politics of the alliance consensus in Australia’s election. Peter Dutton proclaims: ‘If I need to have a fight with Donald Trump or any other world leader to advance our nation’s interest, I’d do it in a heartbeat.’
Fight the US president in a heartbeat? Roll over, Bob Menzies. A Liberal leader breaks an unwritten rule of Australian politics that states that any party doubting the alliance is punished by voters.
Former Liberal prime minister Malcolm Turnbull offered a meditation on how Australia must recalibrate ‘to discuss how we can defend ourselves without America’, arguing that ‘Trump makes it very clear he is both a less reliable and a more demanding ally.’
Canberra wise owls such as Dennis Richardson recognise this less-reliable-more-demanding judgement of the US, while still embracing the alliance. Attempting that balance, Dutton offers to fight Trump while maintaining that the AUKUS submarine isn’t at risk, because both sides of US politics see its benefits.
Even the crown jewels of the alliance lose shine. The Economist surveyed Trump’s damage to ‘the world’s most powerful intelligence pact’, the Five Eyes signal intelligence partnership of the US, Britain, Australia, Canada and New Zealand, identifying three risks:
—The US will disrupt the arrangement, ‘perhaps acting on its threats to boot out Canada from the Five Eyes’;
—The allies will share less, fearing that ‘the Trump administration will be lax in protecting its secrets’; and
—The most likely scenario is that Trump’s war on the federal bureaucracy and politicisation of the intelligence community ‘will cause turmoil and paralysis among American spies that spill over onto allies’.
In the new reciprocal tariff schedule just released by Trump, Asia is the top target. Countries getting tariffs in the 40 percent range include Vietnam, Cambodia, Sri Lanka, Laos and Myanmar; those in the 30 percent range include China, Taiwan, Indonesia, Thailand and Bangladesh; those in the 20 percent range include Japan, South Korea, India, Malaysia and Pakistan.
As Trump imposes tariffs to shut out the world, Australia could show the Indo-Pacific how open it is by killing the last of its tariffs, completing our trek from being a highly protected economy to one of the most open in the world. Australia’s remaining tariffs range from 3 to 5 percent. We could quickly go to zero. Bryan Clark of the Australian Centre for International Trade and Investment says: ‘Abolishing tariffs would lower prices for consumers, reduce business costs and simplify supply chains, boosting resilience in a disrupted global market.’
Zero tariffs would be an emphatic response to an autarkic US and a practical invitation to the rest of the Indo-Pacific. Australia would answer bad policy with good policy—open Australia versus closed US.