After his recent reelection victory, Australian prime minister Anthony Albanese said he received a positive phone call from President Donald Trump, according to an Australian publication Monday.
“We talked about AUKUS and tariffs and will continue to engage,” Albanese said, adding the two leaders would have a “face-to-face” meetup at “some time in the future.”
“It was very warm,” Albanese said. “I thank him for reaching out in such a positive way as well.”
Albanese, a member of the Australian Labor party, did not further elaborate on the call, though he had criticized what he called “unjustified” steel and aluminum tariffs that Trump levied on the country prior to his April 2 “Liberation Day.”
In a joint address to Congress, Trump announced a plan to establish a new White House Office of Shipbuilding to bolster domestic shipbuilding. As of early April, Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Seapower Subcommittee, told the Exchange Monitor he had not been consulted on the Office, “but I’ve affirmatively outreached to everybody.”
Kaine also said he was unsure whether the Office of Shipbuilding would include AUKUS, the trilateral agreement among Australia, the United Kingdom and the U.S. wherein the U.S. plans to sell Australia three to five used and new Virginia-class submarines in the 2030s.
The United Kingdom, the other party in AUKUS, had launched a parliamentary inquiry into AUKUS in early April to examine “whether the partnership is on track” and consider the “impact of geopolitical shifts” since the agreement was launched in 2021. So far, there have not been updates to this inquiry.
Aside from skepticism from the United Kingdom, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said in February that Trump was familiar with and supportive of AUKUS, and Kaine told the Monitor “I know the administration is very pro-AUKUS so I’ve not picked up on skepticism.
