Donald Trump has interrupted Anthony Albanese's election honeymoon, just as the pair were due to meet

Australia Broadcast Center

21 hours ago

He is arguably at his zenith, having not only defied history but making it on May 3 when, as leader of the Labor Party, Anthony Albanese defeated his opponents in a landslide.
But less than six weeks into his second term as prime minister, the honeymoon has been interrupted, and Albanese is confronted with his first real test: Donald Trump.
If all goes to plan (and with Trump, this is hard to predict) Albanese will hold his first face-to-face meeting with the US president on the sidelines of next week's Group of Seven summit in Canada.
Nestled in Alberta's Rockies, Kananaskis' population of 130 is about to swell more than 10 times that size as world leaders descend on the verdant valley.
It is here that Albanese will be warmly embraced by new Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, a progressive ally, and hold his first formal meetings with the new leaders of Japan and South Korea.
The Australian side is hoping Albanese will also get — at the very least — a "grip and grin" with Trump but on Thursday, an already challenged relationship showed further signs of strain.
Albanese could find himself walking into an old-fashioned shake-down with a president determined to extract more from his closest friends and allies.
The missive landed as most Australians were still asleep: "Pentagon launches review of AUKUS nuclear submarine deal," read the headline in the UK Financial Times.
Signal chats from Canberra to Washington started lighting up as everyone from defence officials down tried to understand what it might mean for the $368 billion deal, aimed at countering China's rise in the region.
They only needed to log in to Twitter.
Pentagon official Eldridge Colby — who will lead the review — fired across the bow, posting a quote from US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth: "Hegseth on Tuesday reiterated Trump's call for allies in the Indo-Pacific to increase their defence burden-sharing".
Posted, as they say, without comment but it came only minutes before the story broke in the Financial Times.
According to the Pentagon, the aim of the review is to ensure AUKUS "is aligned with the president's America First agenda" which requires "allies step up fully to do their part for collective defense".
Colby is an AUKUS-sceptic and doesn't believe Australia is spending enough to defend itself in this deteriorating strategic environment.
Before he was even appointed to the role, he told Congress the main concern the US should raise with Australia was its spending on defence, which is currently on track to reach 2.3 per cent of GDP by 2033.
"Australia is currently well below the 3 per cent level advocated for by NATO Secretary General [Mark] Rutte, and Canberra faces a far more powerful challenge in China," he said earlier this year.
NATO, for what it's worth, is now advocating a target of five per cent of GDP (a "quantum leap in our collective defence") to keep aggressors like Russia at bay.
On the issue of defence spending, Colby has a powerful ally in Hegseth — the US Defense Secretary — who held face-to-face talks with Defence Minister Richard Marles a fortnight ago.
At the Shangri-La dialogue in Singapore, Hegseth "conveyed that Australia should increase its defence spending to 3.5 per cent of its GDP as soon as possible" according to a Pentagon read-out.
Albanese has firmly pushed back on the US demands, bristling at the suggestion that Australia set an "arbitrary" spending target: "Australia should decide what we spend on Australia's defence," the prime minister said.
If the government knew about the impending review "for weeks", as Marles asserted, it could well have been that Hegseth also used that meeting to inform him of the Trump administration's move. Although, you wouldn't have guessed it from his comments.
Asked by a journalist about the state of the pact immediately following those talks, Marles said: "we walk forward with a sense of confidence about the way in which AUKUS is proceeding."
No hint of a review to be announced only a fortnight later — to the surprise of many.
Publicly, the government is trying to appear unfazed, saying it is natural that the new administration would want to examine the agreement, and pointing out the UK had recently completed its own. It is adamant Australia's decision to sanction two far-right Israeli ministers on Wednesday is not in any way connected.
Privately, they speculate the review might be a Colby-led frolic but what they don't know is whether he is proceeding with the blessing of Trump (who has never spoken publicly about AUKUS) or if the future of the AUKUS deal is genuinely in peril without a sharp increase in spending.
Under the three-nation, 30-year pact, Australia will acquire eight conventionally armed nuclear-powered submarines, and the first three will come directly from the United States before the allies create the new SSN AUKUS fleet.
Australia has already made a down-payment — handing over more than $1 billion to the Americans — but there are real concerns about the ability of US shipyards to build enough subs to replace the ones it is selling.
Working in Australia's favour is the fact that Hegseth himself is a big backer of AUKUS, the deal has strong bipartisan support in Congress, and between Washington, London and Canberra it enjoys "deep institutional buy-in", according to sources.
But the deal has now been caught in a complex web of forces in the United States — both political and industrial — and at this early stage, it is not yet clear who will prevail.
These are the questions Albanese will be seeking to answer if he scores a meeting with Trump because, when it comes to replacing our ageing fleet of submarines, Australia has no Plan B.
During the election campaign, the prime minister successfully used anti-Trump rhetoric to his advantage, something he and Carney have in common. Having now been returned to power, he will need to build a connection with Trump as the list of disagreements, from defence spending and tariffs to Israel, grows longer.
When Trump lands in Canada — a country he openly covets — he will likely cut a lonely figure on the world stage.
His last appearance at a G7 summit in Canada ended in a blow-up over — you guessed it — tariffs, and produced the iconic image of Trump looking like a diminished figure in the shadow of then-German chancellor Angela Merkel.
This time around, just months into his second term as president, Trump has managed to make himself even more isolated.
As the New York Times has observed, next week's summit will be the first time since Trump was re-elected that he will be confronting such a large array of allies on the receiving end of hostile actions by his administration. And none are happy about it.
Carney, who is presiding over the talks, is using Trump's retreat to his advantage, reportedly planning bilateral and smaller meetings on the sidelines — without the US president.
"Canada is ready to lead," the Canadian prime minister said, adding: "The G7 must meet this moment with purpose and with force."
As well as Albanese, Carney has invited the NATO secretary and UN secretary general to the talks, on top of multiple observers, including the leaders of Ukraine, India, the UAE, South Korea and South Africa.
It is a show of unity among largely like-minded nations who, by-and-large, disagree with the notion that it is only biggest who should set the global rules.
Trump is reshaping the world order but perhaps not in the way he had imagined.