Trump's America could mean a crossroads for Australia and Canada's political futures

Australia Broadcast Center

5 days ago

When Australians went to the polls in May, the Labor party achieved a result that didn't seem possible at the beginning of the year.
They won in a landslide, and the Liberal party not only lost the election, but opposition leader Peter Dutton lost his seat in parliament.
Canada's opposition leader met a similar fate only a matter of weeks before.
Just before both the Canadian and Australian elections, Donald Trump was reinstated as the United States' president.
His return to power was thought to influence the outcomes of those two elections, leading commentators to coin the term, "the Trump effect".
Leo Crabe, a lecturer and independent researcher who specialises in international policy and global affairs, believes voters didn't like what they saw happening in the US from afar.
"Voters in both countries saw Trump's nationalism and unpredictability … and instead chose to support different leaders who promised a different approach," he told ABC Radio National's Future Tense.
As two current centre-left governments, Australia and Canada share many common features.
They're both large countries with geographically dispersed populations, and have a shared British colonial history.
So, in a time of global uncertainty, does it make sense for the two nations to build a closer bond for future prosperity?
It's been a turbulent time following Trump's return to power, and Crabe says that Canada and Australia have been given a "wake-up call" regarding their countries' relationship with the US.
"Canada and Australia are now at a crossroads," he says.
"In Canada's case, Trump's tariffs presented an existential economic risk for key sectors of the economy.
"Australia, likewise, experienced economic pressure and threats of tariffs from Trump and, for both countries, these threats aren't merely financial."
Crabe says they also highlight "the danger of an over-reliance on a partner that has unfortunately become unpredictable".
This might be the cause, he suggests, for both countries to re-evaluate their relationship with the superpower.
"Neither Canada nor Australia can disregard that partnership [with the US] entirely. But there's a key difference: strong ties don't have to mean subordinate ties," Crabe says.
"Canada and Australia can strengthen their own positions by actively building new partnerships."
He proposes that by coming together, the nations can step into a greater united leadership and have a bigger footprint on the international political stage, protecting themselves from a less predictable US force.
"This will make us less vulnerable to US policy and position them [Canadians] to engage with the US from a point of strength," Crabe adds.
Based on their similarities Canada and Australia are natural political partners, but when it comes to trade, they're competitors.
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Both countries prioritise the export of raw materials, which could be an issue when relying on US trade.
Enter "Ozanada" a fictional country coined by The Economist Magazine in 2023 to make a point about the way both nations have developed and what could spell problems for them in the future.
The University of Sydney's special innovation advisor, Roy Green, says an over-reliance on raw exports and an under-fed innovation sector threatens to hold "Ozanada" back.
"It's partly because we have smaller populations that can't sustain as much competition, but it does stifle the prospect of greater innovation because competition is essential to that," Professor Green says.
"We have made ourselves the victims of the resource curse, which is not a naturally occurring phenomenon. It's a political choice."
Canada and Australia are already partners in many military initiatives, including intelligence.
Both nations are currently members of the Five Eyes intelligence alliance, along with New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States.
It represents a long-standing agreement for cooperation in intelligence gathering and analysis, primarily focused on signals intelligence.
In comparison, the idea of CANZUK (Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the UK) has been around since the late 1960s, and proposes a stronger political and economic alliance between the countries.
Critically, it wouldn't include the US.
"The idea really would be to identify each other as best mates in the world and to draw closer together over time," says economist Andrew Lilico.
When Canada recently purchased Australia's Jindalee Operational Radar Network (JORN), a vast radar system that lets Australia monitor the sky and sea thousands of kilometres away, it shocked international security experts.
"It was something that kind of came out of left field," says Wesley Nicol, a foreign policy expert from Carleton University in Canada.
"The reason why this matters so much is not only because it's Australia's largest defence export ever, but because one of the pressures that Canada has been facing from the United States is to not only spend more on defence, but specifically to increase capabilities in the Arctic."
Dr Lilico agrees that the swift purchase of JORN by Canada's new Prime Minister Mark Carney may relieve some of the pressure the country is receiving from the US.
It's another example of the two nations working together for future benefit, and excluding the US.
CANZUK supporters, like Dr Lilico, believe this could be an ideal moment for the alliance to be realised.
He says that Trump's behaviour and policies have led many to see that the US "isn't similar in its outlook" and "isn't really a reliable partner".
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