Australia-US Relations under the Trump Administration
Australia-US Relations under the Trump Administration
Address to the Australian Institute of International Affairs
9 September 2026, Canberra
Dr Kevin Rudd AC
26th Prime Minister of Australia
Global President of the Asia Society, New York
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It’s good to be back in Canberra, the nation’s capital.
It’s also good to be back at the Australian Institute of International Affairs.
I remember, back in the pre-Mesolithic period, when I was contemplating a career in the Australian foreign service, attending my first conference of the AIIA at what was then the old Canberra Hotel.
I remember it was an AIIA gathering to learn from the great Dr Owen Harries and his report, way back then, on Australia’s relationship with the Third World.[1]
As we approach the centenary of the AIIA in 2033, we should reflect on the careers of its founding lights, including Sir John Latham, our first minister to Japan in 1940, and Sir Frederic Eggleston, our first minister to China and its wartime capital at Chongqing.
Latham and Eggleston lived and worked at the cutting edge of Australian diplomacy and national security policy in the lead-up to and during the hardest years of the Second World War.
We are indebted to their service.
Indeed, we are indebted to the service of so many of our career diplomats over the decades since then, including Sir Alan Watt and Sir Laurence McIntyre, who supported Spender’s negotiations with John Foster Dulles on the original ANZUS Treaty in 1951.
Just as we are indebted to those former and serving diplomats gathered with us here this evening in Canberra, who have dedicated their careers to serving our nation’s interests in the region and the world.
Australia continues to need a world-class foreign service. The world is becoming more dangerous, not less. And our interests remain both regional and global.
* * *
History is important.
Properly understood, it should inform us of what we’ve encountered before, how we have dealt with it, and what, therefore, is new.
For example, there are many who believe that the debate now raging within the United States on its future in the region and the world is new.
It is not.
Those with even a passing familiarity with history need only look at the triumph of the isolationists in the great debate that unfolded in the United States Senate over whether or not to ratify President Wilson’s idea for a League of Nations.
The Senate rejected the League.
The League therefore became effectively rudderless throughout the ’20s and ’30s through the absence of one of the world’s most powerful nations.
And the rest is history.
In the post-war period, the Democrats, under both Roosevelt and Truman, once again set out to negotiate America’s role in the post-war global order.
This time they succeeded, both with the framing of the Bretton Woods institutions in 1944, the UN Charter in 1945, followed by the network of US security alliances, both in Europe and in Asia, framed between 1948 and 1952.
These three elements formed the foundation of what we have called more recently the global rules-based order.
But for those who imagine the founders of this order cut an easy passage through the often-perilous shoals of US domestic politics, they should read carefully the history of the Republican primary of 1952 between Dwight Eisenhower and one Ohio senator Robert Taft.
Robert Taft, the son of former President William Howard Taft, had voted against the ratification of the NATO Treaty in 1949. Taft was a deep NATO sceptic. He was a deep UN sceptic. And he wanted a much more circumscribed American role in the region and the world.
The Republican party, led by the likes of Henry Cabot Lodge and Thomas Dewey, then launched the ‘Draft Ike’ campaign during 1950, in order to head off the Taft-led isolationist bandwagon.
As with many things in the history of politics and international relations, and as Wellington would say after Waterloo, the 1952 primary was a near-run thing.
The 13 states that held primaries recorded 2.8 million votes for Taft and barely 2 million for Eisenhower.
The delegate count went the opposite different direction, but still, after the first round of votes, Eisenhower only scored 595 against Taft’s 500.
It took Tammany Hall-type tactics to finally wrangle the 604 votes that were necessary to deliver Eisenhower the endorsement.
Furthermore, for those who believe this administration is unique in calling on US allies to lift their own defensive efforts, we seem to have forgotten the Nixon Doctrine of 1969.
Item 3 of the Nixon Doctrine stated clearly that, for non-nuclear aggression, the United States would only provide military and economic assistance when requested, but would look to the threatened country to assume the primary responsibility for providing the manpower for its defence.[2]
At the time, this generated general panic across American allies, including Australia, in terms of the reliability of American Treaty guarantees.
I do not trivialise the significance of the current debate within the United States over America’s definition of its future regional and global security policy role.
This is a debate raging between Republicans.
It is also a debate, albeit more quietly, underway among Democrats.
But what gives me absolute confidence that the United States, notwithstanding these debates, will emerge in the future as a continuing, forward committed Indo-Pacific Power is that the United States, both by history and geography, is itself a Pacific power.
Hawaii is a state of the United States. Alaska is a state of the United States. American Samoa, and Guam, and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands are all US territory. For the United States no longer to be a Pacific power would render these Pacific states and territories vulnerable. And for domestic political reasons alone, no administration of the United States would ever be prepared to permit that.
We therefore need to place these current debates in historical context – and also in geographical context – and frame our own responses accordingly.
One of which, of course, is for Australia to continue to increase its own defence expenditure to 3 per cent of GDP by 2032 (based on NATO’s methodology).[3]
Not only is this an expectation of the United States for all its allies.
Most importantly, for our own national security and national sovereignty, Australia requires this greater funding envelope in order to develop the full range of capabilities that we will need to sustain our own interests into the future.
* * *
The US-Australia relationship right now is in excellent working order.
This has not been by accident.
This is because the Prime Minister, ministers and officials, together with their American counterparts, have made the relationship work.
If you were to compare the current state of Australia-US relations with those of any other ally across either Asia or Europe, you would be hard-pressed to find a relationship in better working order than our own.
At the same time, the government has succeeded in stabilising the Australia-China relationship.
That is not to say there are no fundamental disagreements with Beijing.
There are. And from time to time, these are on public display.
But by and large, both Beijing and Canberra decided to put away the megaphone.
This is a welcome development. And enables us to continue to prosecute a mutually advantageous economic relationship.
The government, therefore, deserves considerable credit for achieving these outcomes. It has been the product of much ministerial engagement. It has been the product of much productive, nimble diplomatic footwork across multiple capitals.
Australia has a considerable record of achievement.
First, we have succeeded in legislating AUKUS. This was no small achievement. Getting both Democrats and Republicans on side for what is a transformative piece of legislation was no mean feat.
Remember, this legislation involves the transfer of the crown jewels of American submarine nuclear technology to Australia. This has not been available to any other ally other than the United Kingdom. This required considerable, consistent, patient and persuasive diplomacy with both the House and the Senate.
I had the pleasure of personally getting to know more than a hundred congresspeople during that time, as well as the vast majority of US Senators and Governors around the country.
The fact that we were able to achieve that with the Defence Authorisation Act of 2023 was a banner achievement for Australia.[4]
Second, the fact that the Australian Government was able to persuade the incoming Trump administration that what had been essentially a Biden administration initiative was worthwhile pursuing was also no mean feat.
The Prime Minister and the Foreign Minister engaged their counterparts on this question over a long period of time.
So, when President Trump proclaimed to Australia, America and the world that it was now ‘full speed ahead’ with the implementation of AUKUS, this too was a red-letter day for Australia.
Third, the fact that we have also been able to secure agreement for AUKUS Pillar II – creating a virtually seamless market between the United States, Australia and the UK for the most advanced defence technologies and platforms – has also been a remarkable achievement.[5]
It is the envy of all other American allies.
Properly implemented, Pillar II represents a paradigm shift in Australia-US defence industry and defence technology relations.
Properly implemented, it will create a new generation of Australian defence industries as we work within an increasingly frictionless US-Australia defence product and technology market.
Properly implemented, it will be foundational to the realisation of Defence Industry Minister Pat Conroy’s strategy for the future resilience of the Australian defence industrial base.
And, against all this strategic uncertainty for the future, nothing is more important for Australia’s national security future than a robust defence industrial and technology base.
We never want to find ourselves again in the position in which we found ourselves in 1939, 1940 and 1941.
Fourth, Australia and the United States have negotiated a path-breaking critical minerals and rare earths agreement, which opens a new chapter – not only in collaboration with the United States in an area where US needs are acute, but also in developing a brand-new industry at scale in Australia.[6]
This is not only about mining.
It’s about processing, it’s about refining, and also – in time – about Australia’s potential to produce its own advanced magnets.
If we do this well for America and for ourselves, so too can we do it for the rest of the industrialised world.
My single selling point to the US body politic on this subject has been that Australia equals the periodic table. We do. The question for us all now is how we deploy it in practice.
Fifth, during the Prime Minister’s October 2025 meeting with President Trump at the White House, they also agreed to develop a Technology Prosperity Deal.[7]
Great progress had been made in the text of this agreement by the time I left Washington in April.
And I’m confident it will soon be concluded.
Why is that important?
Because it helps to give a green light for further inbound US investment across the Australian artificial intelligence stack, to the benefit of our own national economic development.
This applies not only to computing power. It also applies to the development of frontier models in Australia. It applies also to the adaptation of frontier models across the Australian industrial landscape, just as it applies to the training of the Australian workforce.
Over the last three years, we were able to secure tens of billions of dollars in US foreign direct investment into Australia in this sector.
These include a $25 billion commitment from Microsoft, another $20 billion from Amazon, and an initial $4.5 billion investment from Firmus with potential to scale up to $73 billion.[8]
These are ultimately private-sector decisions, but the conditions for cooperation are fostered through the agency of governments, working with partners like the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy under its Chief Technology Officer.
Once the Technology Prosperity Deal is done, I’m confident that tens of billions in additional investment will flow.
The Prime Minister’s recent address, providing a framework for the development of our national AI strategy, provides a solid foundation for the TPD to succeed.[9]
Sixth, we’ve also been able to broaden the base of the Australia-US relationship. That relationship has long rested on the pillar of our enduring defence, intelligence and national security relationship.
But over the last several years, we have sought to add additional pillars to that relationship. Critical minerals and rare earths provide a second pillar.
Advanced technologies will provide a third pillar once the Technology Prosperity Deal is concluded.
And in this regard, we should be aware that what Australia can put onto the table in terms of the sophistication of our quantum sector should not be underestimated. We are currently ranked number five in the world for quantum talent capacity, and we need to maximise our opportunities as a result of that.[10]
But we have also sought to add a fourth pillar to the relationship, and that is as a source of investment capital.
The size of our $4 trillion superannuation industry was not previously understood by the US body politic.
It now is. This is because, with government support, we have convened annual Australian Super Summits in Washington DC, New York and, most recently, Silicon Valley.
The US body politic is now increasingly aware that, in aggregate, the Australian super funds now represent a bigger source of investment capital than both the Saudi and Emirati sovereign funds combined.
We are now at the point where one-in-every-three Australian dollars invested overseas is lodged in US investments.[11] That is because the US remains the largest, most dynamic economy in the world.
If you add to that the critical mass provided by a massive infrastructure bank, such as Macquarie Bank, we are in the process of branding Australia as a major source of global financial capital and financial service providers.
Finance, therefore, has become the fourth pillar of the Australia-US relationship.
The size of our financial services industry and sector was, in the past, well known to Wall Street. But it was practically unknown to American politicians. Now it is.
What that means is that when a future US administration, either Republican or Democrat, looks at Australia, they do not just see a long-standing, reliable national security, defence and intelligence partner.
Of course they do see that – in fact, and during my ambassadorship I had the honour of lecturing at the US Naval Academy, Defense University, Naval War College, Army War College, Airforce Academy and Naval Academy and Indo-Pacific Command – in either my official or personal capacity.
But they now will also see a vital partner in critical minerals and rare earths, as well as in advanced technology, as well as investment capital.
And you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to work out that an institution resting on four pillars is instantly rendered more robust over time than an institution resting on just one pillar.
Seventh, albeit less dramatic than the previous six that I have listed, we’ve been able to liberalise travel arrangements for the Australian business community to the United States.
When I arrived as Ambassador, I was stunned to discover that, despite nearly 20 other countries having Global Entry pre-approval arrangements at US international airports, Australia was not one of them.
And if you don’t have access to Global Entry, it means that on American domestic airline connections, you can’t access what’s called TSA PreCheck.
Both Global Entry and TSA PreCheck combined mean that a business traveller spends many hours less in queues than a regular, infrequent traveller.
I already knew this to be a source of great frustration in the US to the Australian business community.
And I’m pleased to report that this problem has now been resolved.[12]
This therefore makes it much easier for the hundreds of thousands of Australian business travellers to maintain stronger face-to-face connections in United States each year. And for a trade-dependent country like ours, that is important.
This, of course, does not represent a comprehensive list of what we’ve been able to achieve in recent years in the Australia-US relationship.
There have been other significant milestones as well, including our success in ending the Julian Assange saga by bringing him home.[13]
That involved more than a year of patient diplomacy with the US Department of Justice (and British counterpart institutions) to finally conclude a legal process which had dragged on for more than a decade.
Whatever individuals gathered here may think of Julian Assange and the operation of WikiLeaks, my responsibility as Australian Ambassador to the United States was to clear this off our bilateral plate.
We could no longer afford to have this as a bleeding haemorrhage in the overall fabric of the relationship.
* * *
Beyond our bilateral relationship, many have asked whether we can still productively prosecute effective multilateral diplomacy, given decisions by the Trump administration to withdraw from a large number of multilateral institutions.
What the government has demonstrated over the last several years is that we can.
Australia remains active in the UN, the IMF and the World Bank.
We remain active in the G20 and in APEC.
We remain active in major regional institutions, such as the Pacific Islands Forum, where the government has once again registered a remarkable series of foreign policy achievements.
There remains an opportunity for Australia, in partnership with other middle powers around the world, to put our shoulders to the wheel in supporting those UN multilateral institutions which now find themselves under financial and institutional pressure as a result of the US withdrawing.
There is also a critical role to play in ensuring that the normative structure of the UN system continues to enjoy widespread support from across the middle-power democracies, both in Asia and in Europe.
So when people ask today, ‘what is the proper role of the middle powers in supporting the international rules-based order?’ I can think of no better opportunity than to do this.
This would put flesh on the bones of remarks made earlier this year by the Canadian Prime Minister, Mark Carney.[14]
And it would mark a deeply practical contribution to sustaining the multilateral rules-based system as America resolves its internal domestic debate on its future posture within it.
* * *
To conclude, there is much still to be done in the US-Australia relationship.
Ambassador Moriarty in Washington has gotten off to a flying start. I could think of no better person to fill that critical diplomatic role.
Given Greg’s extensive experience in the defence portfolio, where all the most relevant negotiations have been anchored, there is no person better-placed to translate the political and policy agreements we have reached into operational reality.
Also, the fact that President Trump has now appointed Ambassador David Brat to Canberra means Ambassador Moriarty will have a first-class counterpart here in Australia.
The new US Ambassador has a close relationship with the Trump administration, and I’m confident the government will be able to work closely with him.
Also, the fact that the Prime Minister, the Defence Minister and the Foreign Minister have excellent personal and professional working relationships with their US counterparts makes the day-to-day operational dimensions of the US-Australia relationship robust, workable and effective.
Our relationship with the United States remains foundational for Australia’s long-term national security, national economic and national technological interests. And for the reasons I’ve outlined in these remarks, I remain deeply confident about the robustness of our relationship with the United States, including their alliance, including AUKUS, for the long-term future.
[2] https://www.nixonfoundation.org/2017/09/address-nation-war-vietnam-november-3-1969/
[3] https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/download/media/pressrel/10805277/upload_binary/10805277.pdf
[5] https://www.defence.gov.au/defence-activities/programs-initiatives/aukus-advanced-capabilities
[8] https://international.austrade.gov.au/en/news-and-analysis/success-stories/aws-plans-to-invest-a20-billion-to-expand-digital-infrastructure-in-australia-by-2029; https://international.austrade.gov.au/en/news-and-analysis/news/global-ai-leaders-bet-on-australias-success; https://www.industry.gov.au/publications/national-ai-plan/capture-opportunities
[9] https://www.pm.gov.au/media/ai-australias-interests-0
[12] https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/download/media/pressrel/9877590/upload_binary/9877590.pdf
[13] https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/download/media/pressrel/9813071/upload_binary/9813071.pdf