Australia’s unique supply of sought-after minerals gives Albanese leverage going into the White House meeting.
For months, debate around the US-Australian alliance centred on the US demands of Australia to spend more than 3 per cent of GDP – equating to tens of billions of dollars each year – on defence. But the salience of critical minerals has skyrocketed as China has limited exports to the world, threatening the sovereign manufacturing capacity of the US and other competitors.
Treasurer Jim Chalmers.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen
China’s move has sparked a 100 per cent tariff threat from Trump, causing havoc in global sharemarkets and creating the spectre of a trade war between Australia’s major security ally and its biggest trading partner.
US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent this week said Western nations should “decouple” from China, a notion quickly shut down by Chalmers, who met Bessent this week as he spruiks Australia’s economic relationship with the US.
“I think it’s well understood here in Washington, DC, that Australia’s put a lot of effort into stabilising that key economic relationship with China,” Chalmers said.
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“The views that Secretary Bessent expressed is not the first time they’ve expressed views of that nature.
“Australia’s interests are best served by more trade, not by more trade barriers.”
A spokesman for China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Lin Jian, pushed back on Bessent’s claim in a press conference on Thursday.
“China’s export control measures are consistent with international practice and are taken to better safeguard world peace and regional stability, and to fulfil China’s non-proliferation and other international obligations,” he said.
Conroy talked up the AUKUS pact on Friday.
“At a congressional level, I was meeting with senior leaders in Congress who were evangelical about the importance of AUKUS, who expressed real confidence that it would continue, and I also met with real positivity in my engagement at the Pentagon on the same issue,” he said.
The prime minister will depart for the US on Sunday. He is due to meet with Trump in the Oval Office most likely early on Tuesday morning Australian time.
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