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Editor’s Note PLANET AUSTRALIA Donald Trump last visited Australia in 2011, when he promoted The Apprentice and delivered addresses to the National Achievers Congress. In his speech in Sydney, he chided Australia for selling its commodities too cheaply to China (“they need you so badly . . . screw them”), praised the country’s strong economy, entered into some banter with former Miss Universe Jennifer Hawkins, and delivered a series of business lessons that were both embarrassingly vacuous and uncannily prescient (“see yourself as victorious”, “get even with people”). Fourteen years later, many of the messages remain familiar – including his criticism of former US president Jimmy Carter for “giving away” the Panama Canal. There are two significant insights for Australia to be gained from that trip. First, notwithstanding Trump’s friendships with various Australian billionaires and Greg Norman, Australia is a mere blip on the president’s global radar. He has no serious business interests here (the New South Wales government rejected his bid to build a casino EDITOR’S NOTE 3
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in the mid-1980s due to his “mafia connections”). In a tweet during his brief 2011 visit, he praised Australia for its “terrific people who love America”. Mostly, Australia’s inconsequence is likely to be an advantage during Trump’s second presidency. Countries that have a prominent role in his worldview often enter his crosshairs, no matter how close they have been historically to the United States. He wants Canada to become the fifty-first state. The other significant lesson for Australia is that Trump, a creature of the 1980s, has been strikingly consistent in his main preoccupations. For decades he has called for a return of tariffs, criticised American allies as freeloaders and demanded cuts to the flow of migrants. Since Trump formed these views, Australia has dramatically changed, as has its place in the world. In the past forty years, US gross domestic product has increased sixfold; Australia’s has increased sixteen-­fold. Just one Asian country – Japan – was among the world’s biggest economies in 1985; now there are three: China, Japan and India. It is not just Australia but much of the world that now looks to find its security and prosperity in Asia. The challenge for Australia will be to try to secure its opportunities in Asia, including its soaring trade with China, even as Trump risks undermining them. Too often Trump’s erratic nature has led to a focus in Australia on whether he will undermine the US–Australia alliance. But much of this fretting is unwarranted. Australia, if anything, has become more 4 AUSTRALIAN FOREIGN AFFAIRS

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Editor’s Note

PLANET AUSTRALIA

Donald Trump last visited Australia in 2011, when he promoted The Apprentice and delivered addresses to the National Achievers Congress.

In his speech in Sydney, he chided Australia for selling its commodities too cheaply to China (“they need you so badly . . . screw them”), praised the country’s strong economy, entered into some banter with former Miss Universe Jennifer Hawkins, and delivered a series of business lessons that were both embarrassingly vacuous and uncannily prescient (“see yourself as victorious”, “get even with people”). Fourteen years later, many of the messages remain familiar – including his criticism of former US president Jimmy Carter for “giving away” the Panama Canal.

There are two significant insights for Australia to be gained from that trip.

First, notwithstanding Trump’s friendships with various Australian billionaires and Greg Norman, Australia is a mere blip on the president’s global radar. He has no serious business interests here (the New South Wales government rejected his bid to build a casino

EDITOR’S NOTE

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