As mentioned earlier, there was always little or no prospect that Trump would carve out an exception to steel and aluminium imports from Australia. In any event the economic impact is marginal and I dislike the prospect of being in anything like a “special relationship” with Trump.
What is more important is that he has shown a complete disregard for honouring treaty requirements – such as the USMCA treaty, which he himself renegotiated in his first term, and also NATO. In Trump’s transactional world where everything has a price, what reliance can be placed upon the US’s “commitment” to ANZUS, and now AUKUS, which he apparently he didn’t know existed.
That commitment needs to be tested formally, but we should proceed on the basis that no reliance can be placed upon the United States in terms of our defence. That has a number of corollaries – including, continued US participation in Five Eyes, the continuation of AUKUS and our defence procurement choices.
Despite their very much lower capacity, I feel much more comfortable working in defence coordination with our “old Commonwealth friends”, the UK, Canada, and New Zealand together with Europe, Japan and South Korea than I do with the United States. While there are many well meaning people in the US they have given a toddler the keys to the family car, not once but twice, and the US is proving to be neither reliable or loyal.
