US foreign policy under Trump calls for bipartisan reaffirmation of Australian values and national interests.

Since 2016, Australia’s policy establishment has tried to square the circle between security and economic priorities. China’s status as an important trading partner could not be easily reconciled with support for US as Australia’s “best ally” in the effort to contain Chinese influence. This stubborn dilemma has become even more vexing. Australia now has to maintain its own values and interests while coping with US “regime change”.

Between 65 to 69 per cent of Americans now worry about their country’s future. The Lowy 2026 poll reports a freefall in Australians’ trust in the US to 31 per cent. The Swan/Halberman new bestseller book, Regime Change, concludes that the second Trump administration has wrought an unprecedented structural anomaly that constitutes nothing less than de facto “regime change”.

The disturbing list of American domestic institutional anomalies includes not only hogtying Congress and directly pressuring the Supreme Court, thus prejudicing basic constitutional checks and balances. Also on the list is politically differentiated punitive treatment of “sanctuary cities”; the president’s personal colonisation of professional agencies such as the Department of Justice, the Reserve Bank and the IRS; loyalty purges in the “War Department” and military brass; gerrymandering and interference with the states’ regulation of national elections. More than the American liberty bell is cracked.

“Regime change” is deeply impacting US international relations. How is Trump leading “the free world”? Displaying unqualified exceptionalism, he hails the US as “the greatest country in human history”. His polarised America, however, is not........

© Pearls and Irritations