Political leadership can engender hope in a world beset by shifting fears about economic instability, cyberattacks, authoritarian states, terrorism and a possible US-China war, but Australians now rate US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping about as trustworthy as each other.
The Lowy Institute’s annual poll on how Australians view the world found trust in the US had plunged to a record low under the Trump administration. After some 17 months in office, Trump’s impulsive and unpredictable behaviour has resoundingly alienated Australians, with only one in five having faith in him to do the right thing in world affairs. The same poll found one in five of us deem Xi as similarly treacherous.
The depressing truth is that to Australians, Trump has trashed his own peculiar brand of democracy so forcefully he has made himself as reviled as the man who runs the world’s largest dictatorship.
Their unpopularity among Australians presents a curious and challenging foreign policy conundrum: with friends like these, who needs enemies?
There is a saving grace, however.
We may hold our noses at Trump, but Australians clearly see the bigger picture. We consider Japan, New Zealand and the UK as far more trustworthy, but differentiate between joint international interests and those spruiked by a faltering political leader who has clumsily besmirched his nation’s reputation, wreaked economic chaos and caused oil prices to soar by embarking on a futile war.
Another survey reveals a consequence of America’s fall from glory under Trump: Washington’s Pew Research Centre found the proportion of Australians who rated the US as a reliable partner fell to 37 per cent, crashing from 79 per cent in 2022 when Joe Biden was president.
In contrast with the Lowy poll, the Pew survey also found Xi won the trust of more Australians than Trump, with 23 per cent saying they had confidence in him to do the right thing, compared with 18 per cent for the US president.
The polls amount to the same thing. Trump is on the nose.
Despite the transgressions, Australians are not rejecting the US out of hand.
Lowy found support for the US alliance was 73 per cent, down by a relatively modest 7 points since last year. Similarly, Australians keenly discern the difference between the current US president and the long-term AUKUS pact. Public support for the submarine agreement was essentially unchanged at 68 per cent, up by 1 point since last year.
Lowy’s director of international security Sam Roggeveen told the Herald’s Peter Hartcher it was remarkable that AUKUS support has remained solid. As Xi is churning out nuclear-powered attack submarines and is expected to triple his nation’s clear weapons arsenal by 2035, Australians recognise the reality of the new world order.
Australia was alone when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbour and later Darwin and North Queensland. It was the US that came to our aid. Eighty-five years on, in the face of China’s continuing rise, whether we like Trump or not, we still need the US as our greatest ally.
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