Rethinking Trump: Should Australia follow Canada's lead?

The Australian Financial Review.

A year into his second term as US President, the world is still grappling with how to manage Donald Trump. The past 12 months have been marked by tariff threats, Oval Office fights and foreign policy adventures that have sent world leaders running for cover. Last week, a defiant Canadian Prime Minister, Mark Carney, who'll visit Australia in March, urged middle powers to There is a strong For countries to go along to get along, to accommodate. Compliance will buy safety.

Australian political leaders might not feel so brave that they can. out Trump for his behaviour on the global stage. Welcome to the FIN. I'm Lisa Murray. This week, the Financial Reviews United States correspondent, Jessica Garner. And whether Australia should be a little bit more than a little bit. It's Thursday. Thanks for joining us from Washington, Jess. It's great to be on the line. It's very cold there, I understand.

We are in the middle of a huge snowstorm in Washington DC. All of the flights into the various airports have been cancelled and I have been learning the act of being a good neighbour. And shoveling my sidewalk today. Okay, so you're a real local now. You're even shoveling snow. I am, I am. There's a lot to learn when you move to a new country, but I feel like I'm getting there.

So Jess, you've been in Washington for eight months now, and last week marked a year of Trump being back in the Oval Office. What's it like covering the Trump White House every day? It really has been hectic, Lisa. The first six months that I was here was really like that. classic drinking from a fire hose scenario. They talk a lot here about flooding the zone with news and dominating the agenda and dominating people's attention.

I had two weeks off over Christmas, which was nice, was a very nice break and I was Getting prepared to come back on Monday, january five, and on the Saturday morning before I woke up at six AM to a bunch of news notifications about the raid on Caracas. And the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, and it was like, all right, the holiday's over. Donald Trump ordered military strikes.

On Venezuela tonight. He says the president Nicolas Maduro and his wife have been captured. Since then, we've had the latest flare up with the Federal Reserve Chair. The Justice Department has launched an unprecedented criminal investigation against the Federal Reserve and its chairman, Jerome Patton. We've had Trump talking about potentially coming to the aid of protesters in Iran. Keep protesting. This help is on its way.

After Venezuela, it was only two weeks later that we had Trump threatening new tariffs on eight European nations. Including the UK, France and Denmark over their opposition to US control of Greenland. To try and force them to allow the US to purchase Greenland, which he said is crucial for national security. Of course, that terror threat was over within the week. At the same time, in the background or in the forefront, if you're a US citizen, you've had this growing protest movement.

Ice undeterred as it continues what it calls its largest enforcement operation of the immigration raids in Minnesota, and there's now been two shooting deaths of US citizens by federal immigration agents there. The second Alex Pretty just this weekend. Tonight, more protest individuals in Minneapolis after a US citizen was killed by federal agents for the second time in just three weeks.

You just have to try and work out where you can add some value and where you can help readers back in Australia understand what's going on here and and why it matters. And so among all of these was the We had the announcement that Kevin Rudd will step down as ambassador a year earlier than expected, amid speculation he's gonna launch another bid for the UN Secretary General role. That's right. We know that the former Prime Minister, Ambassador Rudd, has had a tough time with the White House.

Uh but yeah, we had the news two weeks ago that he was stepping down And it raised a lot of questions about who we were going to put into that role and then have you made a decision yet, Prime Minister, on who will replace Kevin Rudd as Australia's ambassador to the United States? We hear uh that our new man in Washington is going to be Mr Moriarty is I think

an outstanding Australian public servant. The outgoing Defence Secretary Greg Moriarty. So yes, there's no shortage of news to report on. But one extraordinary thing is the way in which we often hear about the information.

Trump is a known night owl. I just don't think he sleeps very much and he often posts on Truth Social. I have uh it's set up so it pings me every time Trump makes a post and Some nights he's uh very prolific on Truth Social. He's a really accessible president when it comes to the press asking him questions. So much thank you so much, Mr President. Every other day he has got

uh pool reporters in the White House who are able to throw questions at him and he loves it. They last for such a long time. And it's such a difference, uh, having come from Canberra where everything was a little bit more controlled and press conferences, especially with the leader, with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, were not as regular.

So he's an accessible president, but yes, is he starting to lose the crowd? His approval rating has been falling, and there's lots of speculation that his press conferences, while there might be many of them, are becoming more rambling and more incoherent. Trump is seventy nine and after Joe Biden and what we saw in hindsight was a real deterioration in his faculties, there is a lot of focus on Trump's public appearances and how he manages those.

Some looked at the One Year in Power press conference last week and the rambling nature of it and started to ask questions about his faculties. I don't think he's losing his marbles. Although I would say it's not His big press conference uh that he gave in Davos last week. He mistakenly referred to Greenland as Iceland quite a few times.

Iceland, that I can tell you. I mean our stock market took the first dip yesterday because of Iceland. So maybe that's another bit of evidence in the deterioration column. But I think he's still sharp. My observation is that he has lost a bit of energy. If you think back to the campaign rally style speeches of twenty twenty four, yes they were meandering, but they came with punch and he just seems a bit more flat now. And

On the approval ratings, as you mentioned earlier, they have been in pretty steady decline since his inauguration last year, and they're now in the late um thirty percent kind of range, depending on what poll you look at. So that's thirty eight, thirty nine, forty percent of the country approve of what he's doing, and you have to go back to Nixon to find a president who had a lower rating at this point in their second term. Okay. This really matters.

As we look forward to the midterms this year, which are in november twenty twenty six. If people have turned off Trump, it's going to be very hard for Republicans to gain their vote. And if Trump loses the House, or indeed the Senate, which probably is less likely, it just really impedes his ability to get stuff done on the domestic front. And there'll also be this threat of uh investigation and impeachment by a Democrat controlled House.

One thing to note is that his team really would like him to Focus back on affordability and the cost of living it is the number one issue for Americans. They are feeling the cumulative effect of years of high inflation. Expensive last month. But it is so clear from the way that he engages with the press and answers their question that he just doesn't want to talk about it. Affordability is a hope.

Evidence for that is uh the surging share market. Mm-hmm. The other thing is he just can't help himself with these overseas frolics. He wants to be seen as a peacemaker on the global stage. But this is not helping with the key issue the voters care about, which is cost of living and the economy. Financial markets seem to have taken the chaos of the Trump administration in their stride for the most part. It's as if they're accustomed to Trump's excesses, they're used to this flooding of the zone.

But markets were spooked by the possibility of the US taking Greenland by force. Why do you think that worried investors and is that why Trump backed down? You're right. Investors, they understand the Trump playbook's a big opening gambit, the period of negotiation and often are pulling back to a slightly more reasonable position.

It's known as the taco. As you know, Trump always chickens out. Mm-hmm. But Greenland really did spook people and we saw a definite wobble in the share market and a reaction in the US dollar. And I wonder if people just thought that it was quite an unreasonable position for Trump to take. It's one thing slapping tariffs on trading partners as an economic boost to your own American manufacturers, but it seems another to use it as

economic coercion to take land from another country which is an ally. So I think the unreasonableness of it was quite jarring for a lot of people. You know, I don't think that markets are moral, but it did seem like an escalation in what Trump was prepared to use tariffs for.

Jess, people say about Trump that he listens to the last person who was in the room. Now that you've been in Washington DC, you're there, you're covering this every day, in your opinion, who are the most important people around Trump? Who's influential in his inner circle? I think that the Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, has been a really influential player in this second Trump term. Every time that Trump announces a new initiative

It's often handed over to Marco Rubio to be the one responsible for it. So after the Venezuela raid, Trump said, We're gonna run Venezuela I'll leave that up to Marco Rubio. Similarly, he's solving the critical minerals crisis. He's negotiating the Greenland deal. He's on the executive board to rehabilitate Gaza. He keeps getting loaded up with responsibility. That's interesting for Australia because I think uh we've seen our Foreign Minister Penny Wong

And also uh Defense Minister Richard Miles have good relationships with Marco Rubio, so good to be in with the guy who Trump sees as one of his most loyal and competent servants. These last few weeks I haven't seen as much of JD Vance, especially where foreign policy has been the topic. He's been doing a few speeches. Uh he's much better at Trump at talking about affordability.

And I do think J.D. Vance does his best to avoid getting too drawn into the foreign policy debates. He has his finger on the pulse with the MAGA movement and sees that that's one thing that they want from the White House. uh staying true to this idea of America first. Mm-hmm. The deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, is

Trump's key attack dog on domestic issues, especially around the immigration raids. If you subtract immigration out of test scores, all of a sudden our test scores skyrocket. He is So fiery and flammantry in his language, it's quite astounding to watch. If you subtract immigration out of public safety.

All of a sudden we don't have violent crime in so many of our cities. One final one that I'll mention is Carolyn Levit, he's press secretary. Okay, so you're a biased reporter with a left wing opinion. She's actually five months pregnant with her second child, so she'll take some parental leave later this year and I'm really curious who they put in that role because Trump really writes.

Carolyn Levitt. She's a very competent and articulate attack dog for Trump. You're not a reporter, you're posing in this room as a journalist. She has this really combative role with the press. But you're pretending like you're a journalist, but you're a left-wing activist.

But she's also an interesting person for young conservative women to look up to and and see in the Trump administration. I think she's been quite valuable to Trump. So I'm interested to see who they try out in her place when she goes off to have her baby.

Yes, last week we had the annual Talk Fest at Davos where the world Rich and powerful meet and talk and gather. Trump didn't go to the last one, but he went to this one. Everyone is talking about Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney's speech and that must be quite galling for Trump because he likes to be the centre of attention. Anthony Albanese on the weekend announced that Carney will come to Canberra and address Federal Parliament in March.

And it's interesting timing because Kearney just laid out his vision for how middle powers should respond to great powers using economic coercion for their own interests. How important do you think that speech was from Mark Carney? Yes, Carney's speech definitely made an impact in Australia.

You know, I thought it was very impactful, very thoughtful. Treasurer Jim Chalmers was asked about it on radio and he said uh certainly uh widely shared and discussed in in our government and no doubt uh around the world. Carney is an interesting figure. He won his election in Canada riding a backlash against the threats that Trump had made to make Canada the fifty first state of the US. He's a very accomplished technocrat. Uh he was a former Bank of England governor.

I think people responded to that speech in the way that they did because it was a real moment of clarity. Let me be direct. We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition. Of great power rivalry, that the rules-based order is fading, that the strong can do what they can, and the weak must suffer.

And as you say, he said that middle powers should really face up to this new reality and form their own network of alliances. We know the old order is not coming back. Based on where they have different issues and areas on which they can cooperate. But we believe that from the fracture we can build something bigger, better, stronger, more just. This is the task of the middle power.

It was brave and you saw how brave it was because straight away the next day Trump called him out on it and just this weekend he said, you know, we're gonna threaten Khani with a hundred percent tariffs if he continues to expand Canada's trade relationship with China, which is something that Carney's trying to do. Mm. I think the other reason people stood up and took notice of Kearney's speech is it was a very clear contrast with Trump's performance at Davos. They have a choice. You can say yes.

And we will be very appreciative. From Trump we had emotional blackmail. Or you can say no, and we will remember. And from Carney, we just had this measured and clear statement. And there was this really interesting point in Carney's speech towards the end where he was listing all the things that Canada has that the world needs. We are an energy superpower.

Power. We hold vast reserves of critical minerals. We have the most educated population in the world. Our pension funds are amongst the world's largest and most sophisticated investors. You could really see the parallels with Australia. And We have the values to which many others aspire. And it has prompted people at home to be asking whether Australian political leaders should be following Carney's lead and speaking out more.

We're talking with US correspondent Jessica Gardner about Trump's first year back in the Oval Office and what it's like to cover a president who likes to flood the zone. Trump spoke at Davos last week, but he was overshadowed by a stirring speech from Canada's Mark Carney that left many in Australia asking why politicians here aren't following his lead.

Jess, should Australia be thinking along the lines of Mark Carney when it comes to managing the relationship with the US and Trump? I think that is a really hard question, Lisa. A lot of people in Australia especially, feel quite shocked at Trump and how he's behaving on the world stage and They do think it's time for world leaders to stand up to him.

If you think of it from the point of view from Anthony Albanese, he has a political calculation to make around what can be gained making disparaging uh remarks about Trump.

We have a lot to gain from this alliance and We are in a pretty good position at the moment with America Certainly better than when I first arrived here around June when we were negotiating over tariffs and we were being hit with these demands to increase our defence spending and of course the AUKUS nuclear submarine deal seemed very much under a cloud as the Pentagon probed it. Comparing to Canada is a bit difficult as well.

Arguably more reasons for Canada to stand up more strongly against the US, given Trump's threats about making them the 51st state. There's a lot more at Stake, and there's a lot more antagonism between Kearney and Trump already that I don't think Albanese needs to follow. AUKUS, yes. Trump has said it is full steam ahead and it has the backing of the White House and everybody's getting on with business now. There's still a lot to be done to ensure that this defence pract works.

to the level that we need it to work. We need to do everything that we can to keep America on track and doing the things that they need to do to get their shipbuilding to the rate required to have

enough submarines by the early twenty thirties, which is when we want to purchase some secondhand subs from America. And I would say on the critical minerals front, There is a lot of potential for Australia to benefit from the US's need to find new sources of critical minerals, but it is really keeping its options open and looking at a lot of potential partners on the critical minerals front and We can say we have a very rich geological endowment and a great mining expertise.

But there are other countries out there with similar qualities who are trying to get an edge and I think the Australian government is served best if they work together with the Trump administration on these two points. So the Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, he really needs to walk a fine line in his relationship with Donald Trump, especially given our relationship with China and how economically dependent we are on trade with Beijing.

it is hard to watch Trump trampling over the rules based order, but I think the course of action is not putting our head above the parapet. And you can see on the weekend, Albanese has made a really pragmatic choice. With regards to our new US ambassador.

We've got Greg Moriarty coming to Washington in the next few months. He's a very experienced public servant coming out of the Defense Department. And I think he has really been chosen to focus on these areas of potential benefit in the alliance that really require a technocrat to keep everything on track. So let's talk about the appointment of Moriarty because there has been

a tendency to appoint a former politician, high profile figure that can pursue a relationship with the president. We saw Joe Hockey and Donald Trump, for example. What Moriarty's background and what does his appointment, the appointment of an experienced public servant? Tell us about the way the Albanese government wants to handle this relationship.

So Ambassador Kevin Rudd is stepping down a year earlier than expected. Ever since it was clear that Trump was going to win the presidency, the comments that Rudd had made previously had hung over him and really clouded. his role in Washington DC. And of course we remember that very awkward exchange in the cabinet room of the White House.

When Albanese visited Who could forget? Trump looked down the barrel at Rod and said, I don't like you and I never will. It was totally awkward inside that room when that happened. It could have been the end of Rut, but instead it turned into a humorous anecdote, then a sign of some deeper fissure in the relationship. So I think what we've seen is Albanese choose Greg Moriarty.

He is really well regarded, he's kind of an adult in the room. He was Malcolm Turnbull's chief of staff, but he served both sides of politics as a senior bureaucrat. He's been the secretary of the Department of Defence for about the last eight years. Mm-hmm. And before that he was with Turnbull and before that he had a very long career in the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

Interestingly, this will be his third ambassadorial role. He was uh previously ambassador for Indonesia and before that Iran. And one thing that I learned is that In two thousand and six and two thousand and seven when he was in Tehran at the Australian embassy there.

He actually was called into Washington D C to give a briefing to then President George W. Bush because the US didn't have any uh diplomatic presence in Tehran. So it's kind of an interesting little tidbit. He's had his taste of the Oval Office and can rely on that a little bit. People thought putting a politician into this post, as we have had for maybe the last four ambassadors, you had Kevin Rudd, Arthur Sinadinas, Joe Hockey, and Kim Beasley all leading political figures.

Some people have kind of said, Well, you need someone of that stature to get into the White House and to have a relationship with Trump. I just don't think that's really Trump's style. I can't imagine that he's meeting many ambassadors at all. I think he's a uh principle to principle kind of guy, as you've seen by all the text messages he's sending and sharing that he has with foreign leaders around the world. And so this idea of a Trump whisperer might not really have worked anyway.

So as you say, Greg Moriarty will be focused on keeping AUKUS on track and securing a critical mineral steel. What are some of the other challenging issues he's likely to face? One issue in the relationship that I think always threatens to rear its head is technology regulation. Donald Trump has really cultivated relationships with the uh technology bosses in the US.

in this second term or rather maybe more correctly they've cultivated relationships with him. Mm. They appear very close to Trump this term and Australia obviously has its world leading social media band for kids, which came in in December last year. and our quite strict rules around harmful content online.

I think there is a risk if we shout from the rooftops how well the social media ban is working and if other countries follow our lead and I have seen reports that the UK and France are moving towards a similar ban. There's just the possibility that we irritate the technology company bosses a bit too much and they put their case to Trump and he starts to get agitated about that as well.

The other thing that we have to keep in mind is our relationship with China. China is obviously our most important economic partner, and we can see that what's happening with Canada, Mkani is working hard to keep that relationship close and and build it up, that is agitating Trump. And we just have to be careful about that relationship and how we're characterizing it, I suppose.

And frankly, the whole world is trying to figure out how to manage Trump. The US is so powerful. They're just a very hard country to stand up to. A final question, then, one year down, three to go, If you had to make a prediction, what do you think the Australia US relationship looks like at the end of Trump's second term? One thing in Anthony Albanese's favour is Donald Trump really likes winners.

And he was quite enamoured with Albanese when he came here on the visit to the White House in October last year, when talking about the landslide election victory for Labour in last year's election. Mm. So long as uh Anthony Albinese can stay ahead in the polls, that might work well in his favour. But I do think there is a long history of friendship between the US and Australia. There's a good economic relationship there. Australian exporters are paying the minimum tariff.

ten percent. And I think if we keep our head below the parapet and only put it up to respectfully disagree when we think Trump has gone too far, then that will keep us in good stead. Mm-hmm. But then again, we also have invited Mark Carney to come to Australia in a few months. You know, this was the chief Stura out of Davos and political leaders might not feel so brave that they can call out Trump for his behaviour on the global stage, but possibly we are heeding Carney's call.

Do you think about those alliances among like minded countries? Three years is a very long time, Lisa, and it's hard to say with any kind of certainty what's going to happen. Around the world. You have areas still where conflict is raging, whether it's the Middle East or Russia Ukraine and this protest movement in Iran and the US is sending an armada of ships there.

Everything just feels quite uncertain here in the States. There's this rising furious protest movement at the immigration raids among concerned US citizens, mostly from the left. And on the right there's a fury at those protesters and it does feel like a little bit of a tinderbox. You wonder if If the economic impacts of the tariff regime actually will start to rear their head more this year.

and make people's lives a little bit more difficult and the idea of the haves and have nots will get even sharper and so we have a really uncertain few years ahead. Thanks for coming on the podcast, yes. It is always a pleasure, Lethal. Thank you for listening to The FIN. I'm Lisa Murray, with the Financial Reviews United States correspondent Jessica Gardner, joining the podcast today.

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