When Donald Trump heaped praise on Anthony Albanese and promised to give “great consideration” to Australia’s bid for a tariff exemption, the adjective caught headlines.
Great consideration! That didn’t sound too bad.
In fact, it sounded downright promising.
It stirred memories of the Trump 1.0 era, when the Turnbull and Morrison governments managed to duck and weave around the president, lobbying key restrainers in the administration and exploiting Trump’s fondness for Australia to win concessions and carve-outs.
The problem is that this time around Trump is restrained by absolutely nobody, and his appetite for compromise seems to have disappeared.
And early this morning — just four weeks after the president dangled the prospect of a reprieve — his press secretary Karoline Leavitt left the distinct impression he’d flicked Australia’s request from inbox to outbox in the space of a heartbeat.
“He considered it, and he considered against it,” she told the ABC.
Led down the garden path?
It was a bitter pill for the federal government, even if it always knew its chances of securing an exemption were slim.
Ever since Trump opened the door, senior government ministers and officials — from Anthony Albanese to ambassador Kevin Rudd down — have ploughed enormous time and energy into lobbying senior administration officials, politicians and businesses for a free pass.
Multiple economists and analysts have pointed out that the economic reverberations here will be quite limited. Probably.
But the Trump tariff question — “will he, won’t he” — still took on an oddly talismanic quality, emerging as the first real litmus test of whether the “special relationship” and decades-long military alliance would maintain real currency in a White House consumed by beggar-thy-neighbour zealotry.
The curt “No” on tariffs hasn’t just exposed Labor to furious criticism from the Coalition.
It will also stir fresh anxieties about how much agency and influence Australia has in an alliance with a partner intent on upending decades of strategic orthodoxy.
All of which might explain why the prime minister and foreign minister — who have kept resolutely silent on a litany of head-spinning headlines out of Washington DC for the past six weeks — today found their voice.
There was a vague sense of a dam wall bursting when the prime minister called the decision “against the spirit of our two nations enduring friendship” and when the foreign minister declared it was “not the way to treat a friend and partner”.
The Trade Minister Don Farrell let his frustration shine through, even suggesting the final decision was a fait accompli and Trump’s officials had been stringing them along.
“The disappointing thing is if the Americans had simply told us right at the start, ‘Forget about it — there are going to be no exemptions,’ … [then] that would have been a far easier situation,” he told Sky News.
“I don’t believe there was any intention on the part of the United States government to give us an exemption.“
That runs contrary to what has been said by others in the government, who did indeed nurse a quiet hope there might be a narrow window which Australia might squeeze through.
But with it now slammed shut — at least for now — the government might be recalibrating its approach.
Albanese reaches for Team Australia appeal
There’s no sense the Albanese government is looking to pick new fights with Trump on the other side of the tariff decision, or that it’s seeking an escalation of this one.
It’s been at pains to emphasise that the US isn’t singling out Australia, reminding voters these are universal, global tariffs, and that a host of other US friends and allies that lined up to pitch for an exemption — including Japan, France and the UK — have been rejected too.
And it’s (very sensibly) quashed any talk of trade retaliation, pointing out (rightly) that would be tantamount to shooting itself in the foot.
Still, it’s hard to shake the sense that the government spots a political opportunity here as it prepares to head to the polls.
Trump’s popularity might well have been growing in Australia but he remains — at best — a deeply polarising figure here.
A large majority of voters do not regard him fondly. If the president tips the US into recession or sparks global economic turmoil, that sentiment will only harden.
Albanese did a round of radio interviews this afternoon in the wake of the tariffs — not something a prime minister typically does after enduring a painful strategic and political setback at the hands of a close ally.
When asked on ABC Melbourne how Australia could retaliate, he reached for a mantra from a slightly different era.
“One of the things we can do is to buy Australian. Australians can have an impact by buying Australian goods,” he said.
“You buy Bundy soft drinks, rather than some of the American products.”
On commercial radio, he reached for the term “Team Australia” — which has only rarely seen the light of day since Scott Morrison’s time in office — while not so subtly trying to cable tie Peter Dutton to Trump.
“Peter Dutton had a choice to back Australia or backing the Trump administration, and has chosen once again to talk Australia down,” he said.
Dipping toes into a tougher line on Trump
It’s much softer stuff than what we’ve heard from politicians in Canada, which has endured an extraordinary and utterly unprecedented set of political and economic assaults from the Trump administration.
Or even in the United Kingdom, where Keir Starmer’s dismal poll numbers have shot up while rallying European support for Ukraine in the face of the Trump administration’s open hostility.
But Albanese will not be ignorant of the fact that voters in some other democracies have been happy to rally behind moderate “traditional” leaders who are seen as a bulwark against the storm of Trump and America First.
After spending months refusing to weigh into the US president’s extraordinary pronouncements on Gaza, Canada and Greenland (to name just a few), the prime minister dipped his toe gingerly into the water this afternoon on 3AW.
“The United States, of course, is having a difficult relationship with a range of its neighbours,” he said.
“Not least … the relationship between the United States and Canada which is, of course, rather extraordinary at the moment — not one I would have expected in my lifetime.”
The government will want to make sure it doesn’t antagonise Trump.
It’s keenly conscious that the president’s economic agenda could expose Australia to a host of economic threats — both direct and indirect — which would make today’s tariffs look like a mere nuisance.
In some ways, the alliance will remain indispensable.
There is no suggestion the AUKUS partnership is in any doubt, yet.
But the government knows that every new pronouncement and insult from the US president will stir doubt in the community about Australia’s ties to Trump’s America.
For the first six dizzying weeks of Trump 2.0, Anthony Albanese seemed intent on running away from that debate.
Now there are the first signs he may be carefully edging towards it.
