This coming Monday, October 20, Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese will travel to Washington, D.C., to meet U.S. President Donald Trump at the White House. While the president and prime minister have talked on the phone four times previously, they have only met in person once, in mid-September on the margins of the UN General Assembly in New York.
Given the importance of the U.S.-Australian alliance and the historical closeness between the two nations, the Australian press has raised the question of why Albanese had not secured a meeting earlier in the administration. And yet, despite a number of unresolved trade and defense issues, the relationship has remained relatively consistent even during the last 10 months of global upheaval, likely reducing the urgency in both Washington and Canberra to facilitate a meeting.
Q1: What’s at stake in this meeting for both leaders?
A1: Australia will be looking to have a positive meeting, affirm the importance of the alliance, seek tariff relief, discuss increased collaboration on critical minerals, and, if possible, ensure that AUKUS (a trilateral security partnership between Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States) has Trump’s support. The Trump administration will likely focus on increasing access to critical minerals in Australia, minimizing threats to supply chains, discussing the threat posed to the Indo-Pacific region by China, and pushing Canberra on its trade diversification strategy and defense spending.
Albanese and Trump hail from different ends of the political spectrum, but both leaders come to the meeting in strong domestic positions. Albanese won reelection to a second term in office in May this year with a surprising landslide victory and an overwhelming political majority. He leads a center-left Labor government, although he has governed mostly as a moderate and steady force in Australian politics and governance. Trump is coming off the heels of a successful Israel-Palestine ceasefire negotiation and has been increasingly effective at shaping the U.S. government towards his aims.
Albanese will have to manage growing unease in Australia about the trajectory of the United States. The majority of Australians agree that the alliance with the United States benefits Australia, despite the personal unpopularity of Trump in Australia. Polling shows a near 20 percent decline in trust in the United States over the past six months, even as the overwhelming majority of Australians continue to understand and support a strong alliance with the United States.
The United States and Australia have a security alliance, close cultural ties, and more than a hundred years of partnership. A good meeting between the two leaders will affirm the nations’ shared history, while setting the stage to make substantive progress across several issues, primarily security, trade, and economic cooperation.
The meeting is expected to be amicable, despite policy and ideological differences between the two leaders. While there are not expected to be any major points of conflict or friction in the meeting, like other world leaders, Albanese will certainly be seeking to avoid any kind of “Zelinsky moment.” Given Trump’s unpredictability, his inclination to pressure allies he thinks are not sufficiently pulling their weight, and uncertainty surrounding the future direction of AUKUS, there is always the possibility that the meeting could get uncomfortable for Australia, particularly if Trump decides to press Albanese on Australia’s current level of defense spending.
Q2: What specific agenda items are likely to be raised by each side?
A2: There is a range of issues Albanese and Trump are likely to discuss next week, with U.S. tariffs on Australia, U.S.-Australia collaboration on critical minerals, Australia’s defense spending, the future of AUKUS, and Australian investment in the United States likely to dominate the agenda.
There are disagreements between Australia and the United States on specific policy and international issues; however, it is not likely that these will be a primary focus in the meeting. These issues range from the social media ban for teens set to come into effect in December in Australia, Australian government subsidies to the health care and pharmaceutical industries, and international issues, such as Australian recognition of Palestinian statehood and Albanese’s support for clean energy and championing of issues related to climate change.
More likely, the main issues that will be discussed include the U.S. tariffs on Australian exports—which are deeply unpopular across Australia’s political spectrum—expanded collaboration on critical minerals, Australia’s defense spending levels, and U.S. support for AUKUS, the trilateral pact with the United Kingdom and the United States to provide Australia with conventionally-armed, nuclear-propelled submarines and to deepen cooperation on critical defense technologies.
While the intent behind the meeting is to showcase U.S.-Australian cooperation, it is also set against the backdrop of U.S.-imposed tariffs on Australia, a significant area of contention. With a 10 percent tariff on most Australian exports, Australia sits at the lowest end of U.S.-imposed tariffs. Nevertheless, the Australian public, business community, and political leadership of all stripes have taken exception to the imposition of any amount of tariffs on Australia, a country that runs a trade deficit with the United States. Responding to the April 1 “Liberation Day” tariffs, Prime Minister Albanese claimed that “the [U.S.] Administration’s tariffs on have no basis in logic—and they go against the basis of our two nations’ partnership,” and labelled them “not the act of a friend.” Prime Minister Albanese will likely advocate for relief from new and existing U.S. tariffs, including those imposed on Australian steel and aluminum. Australia is seeking exemptions or modifications to these policies, which impact Australian exports, and Albanese will likely point to measures taken by the Australian government, such as the recent lifting of Australia’s biosecurity ban on U.S. beef. Additionally, this meeting will likely result in the initiation of closer critical mineral supply chain cooperation between Australia and the United States.
Q3: Critical minerals collaboration is likely to top the agenda—why? And what shape will that collaboration take?
A3: Figuring out how to break Beijing’s near chokehold on critical minerals and rare earth materials, both of which are vital for defense and clean energy technologies, is a top priority for both Washington and Canberra. While China’s ability to cut off access to this vital resource has long been identified as a critical vulnerability, Australia, the United States, and many other countries have struggled to figure out the mechanisms, financial incentives, and policy settings to break Beijing’s control of the mining and processing of these materials.
Despite a clear and urgent imperative for a coordinated response among allied nations, progress has been slow. While both the United States and Australia have recognized the issue and engaged in high-level discussions—including the 2023 Australia-United States Climate, Critical Minerals and Clean Energy Transformation Compact—these efforts have yet to translate into the large-scale investment and concrete action needed to build resilient and secure supply chains. There is a natural synergy between the two nations: Australia possesses vast mineral reserves, the United States has the capital markets to bring more of those resources to market, and both countries have a pressing need to diversify their supply and processing capabilities. But to date, deeper collaboration to mitigate the geopolitical risks posed by China’s market dominance has not yet materialized.
The White House meeting will probably result in an announcement about greater collaboration between the United States and Australia on critical minerals. Most likely, it will center around the creation of a strategic reserve of critical minerals, first announced by Prime Minister Albanese during the election campaign this past April, and expected to begin in 2026. The exact plan for this reserve has not yet been determined, but the likely form it will take would be offtake agreements where the Australian government does not hold physical reserves of various minerals but provides a floor price to encourage production, guarantees a certain volume of Australian critical minerals for allied nations, and assists Australia and its partners in their efforts to diversify supply chains away from China.
Q4: What’s the status of the AUKUS?
A4: AUKUS, the defense agreement to provide Australia with conventionally-armed, nuclear-propelled submarines and advance collaboration on critical strategic technologies, has been the centerpiece of U.S.-Australian cooperation over the past several years. Questions surrounding the future of AUKUS have persisted since the new U.S. administration took office, increasing after news leaked in June that the U.S. Department of Defense (recently renamed the Department of War) was conducting a review of AUKUS, and that the review would be led by Elbridge Colby, the U.S. under secretary of war for policy, who had previously expressed skepticism about the agreement.
While Australia and the United Kingdom have both been consulted on the review and shared their arguments for staying the course, it is unclear where the review will land on AUKUS—and whether the White House will ultimately accept its recommendations. The review is ongoing, and it is uncertain if it will be finished ahead of Monday’s White House meeting. Regardless of the results of the review, it will be important for Australia to get Trump’s endorsement on the continuation of AUKUS to ensure that it has leader support.
In the context of AUKUS and the ongoing review, several issues might be raised in the meeting. These include Australia’s financial commitment to the deal in the context of broader defense expenditures, Canberra’s recent and upcoming payments to boost U.S. submarine production capacity, and funding and progress on the buildout of the Submarine Rotational Forces-West facility in Perth. The discussion may also cover the ownership of the Port of Darwin and how AUKUS can contribute to the deterrence of China. While there are a number of critical adjustments necessary to guarantee the sustainability and effectiveness of AUKUS, the most important thing that Albanese will be seeking is a public show of support from Trump.
Q5: Will Trump pressure Albanese to spend more on its own defense outlays?
A5: President Trump has repeatedly called for U.S. allies, including Australia, to increase their defense spending, potentially to as much as 3.5 percent of GDP. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth echoed this call when he met with his Australian counterpart Richard Marles in Singapore at the Shangri-La Conference.
Australia currently spends 2.0 percent of its GDP on defense, a number which has risen in absolute terms but held steady as a percentage of gross domestic product, although it is set to rise to 2.3 percent within the next ten years. During the federal election campaign, this was an issue of disagreement between the major parties, with the center-right Coalition calling for defense spending to rise to 2.5 percent of GDP by 2029, and 3.0 percent within the next decade.
The difference between what President Trump has called for and what the Australian government has committed to spending will be a key point of discussion. Australia will likely make the case that its recent commitment to build up the Henderson Defence Precinct in Perth and invest in autonomous undersea vehicles, contributions to the coproduction of guided weapons systems, and housing of U.S. military bases in Australia amounts to a significant contribution in defense and, in fact, represents more than the amount it spends as a percentage of its GDP. Prime Minister Albanese has also made the point that his government does not consider defense spending as a percentage of GDP a useful metric and will determine its own defense spending based on procurement needs. Australian officials are also likely to point out that if they calculate their defense expenditures according to the NATO standard, they actually spend closer to 2.8 percent of their GDP on defense. Prime Minister Albanese will stress the role that Australia plays in the region, pointing to the security deals it has undertaken, including, most recently, with Papua New Guinea.
Domestic Australian critics have called these numbers insufficient to meet the needs of both a conventional force and the nuclear-powered submarines Australia is set to acquire under AUKUS, while the Prime Minister has consistently argued that “Australia has always pulled [its] weight.”
A recent string of defense-related announcements by the prime minister and defence minister should help bolster Australia’s case, but whether these explanations hold sufficient weight with Trump and answer his repeated calls for allies to increase defense spending remains to be seen.
Charles Edel is a senior adviser and the inaugural Australia Chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C.