Australia has long been one of America’s closest and most reliable friends. That means we can see the Trump administration for what it is.
More than half of Australians now believe that President Donald Trump is a greater threat to global security than Russian President Vladimir Putin (17%) and Chinese President Xi Jinping (16%).
Most of us view the leader of our most important security ally and the world’s most important democracy as a greater threat to world peace than the leaders of the world’s two most powerful authoritarian states.
They’re right.
Australians recognise the real risks of remaining in such a close security alliance with President Trump’s bleak and violent version of America.
Most Australians – 59% – now believe that Australia’s interests are better served by a more independent foreign policy over a closer alliance with the United States.
A clear majority also believe that the United States is an unreliable security ally. Only 13% think of it as “very reliable”.
And we are voting with our feet. The number of Australians visiting America has more than halved.
This is a seismic shift in how Australians perceive America.
Australians are not grateful to Trump
Australia has followed the United States into nearly every war it has fought since the end of the Second World War, no matter where, no matter why, no matter when. Australia went “all the way with LBJ” in Vietnam, then followed the George W. Bush administration into its wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, leaving only when America did.
That unquestioning loyalty was driven by a blind faith in American power, and Australia’s relative lack of it. Some of it was driven by hope and need, based on the assumption that in return, the United States would protect us again if we were in trouble.
But the Trump administration has made it quite clear that it does not care about America’s allies.
Australians are listening when the President of the United States calls America’s allies “cowards” and says that he doesn’t “need” us – all the while attempting to drag us into a catastrophic, illegal war in Iran. We watch as he repeatedly and deliberately humiliates our leaders.
In return for the indignity of a public humiliation and the trashing of longstanding agreements and institutions, the Trump administration demands gratitude. And subservience.
Perhaps the Australian government should be grateful. Australia has largely avoided the wrath of the Trump administration. While it has hit Australia with tariffs, threatened retaliatory action for domestic laws it doesn’t like, and attempted to bully Australia over defence spending, it has not (yet) threatened to take our resources or illegally annex our territory as it has done with Ukraine, Palestine, Canada, Greenland, Iran, Venezuela, Colombia, and Cuba.
Australian diplomats and ministers are working around the clock to insulate this country from the worst excesses of the Trump administration. The stakes for Australia, and the United States’ other allies, are incredibly high.
But on the ground, the Australian mood has changed. We are not grateful. And we are not alone in our thinking. It is reflected again and again by polls across the world.
Growing skepticism of Aukus
Like many of the United States’ traditional allies, the Australian government has not caught up with this rapid shift – at least not publicly. The Labor government continues to behave as if Trump can be waited out, as if the world can weather this storm and return to normal. The government debases itself on our behalf. But they will eventually respond – as any democratically elected government must, should it wish to remain in power – to the will of the people.
Or they might not. The rupture will continue regardless. The stark reality is that our loss of trust in the United States cannot be reversed.
While the government might try to separate the (hopefully) temporary Trump administration from longer-term deals like the Aukus nuclear-powered submarine pact, Australians are not convinced.
In the same March poll, 33% of Australians said that Aukus is not in Australia’s best interests – an increase of 7% on a similar poll in October 2025. A similar proportion (29%) remain unsure about the deal. Amongst Labor voters, the numbers are slightly higher: 36% do not believe Aukus is in our interests, and 30% are unsure. That far outweighs the 34% of Labor voters who do think the deal is in our interests.
(46%) of Australians believe that Australian crew don’t belong on American nuclear-powered submarines.
America’s humiliation
Australians have long loved America. Our relationship is broad, and deep, and at its very best, a reflection of the “shared democratic values” that we are so often told are the basis of our security alliance.
The Trump administration has trashed those values and their institutional expressions. This is not a question of simply rebuilding American “credibility”. What Trump has wrought cannot be undone. Australians recognise that, even if our government refuses to.
As Trump consolidates his power and continues his radical project to remake the United States and the world in his image, there is only one way these numbers will go.
And they should be understood for what they are: reflective of a deep concern over the recklessness and violence of the Trump administration and the danger it poses to all of us.
The humiliation of America’s allies is America’s humiliation, too. The United States is increasingly isolated – allies are already circumventing America as they attempt to navigate their way out of the profound crisis the Trump administration has created for the world. When the President once again berated allies who “didn’t help” in Iran, listing off NATO, Australia, Japan and South Korea, he only highlighted how alone the United States now is in the world.
Those same allies look on with deep sadness and trepidation. We recognise that the collapse of American democracy and the rule of law, and the projection of that turmoil out into the world, is in no one’s interests.
We do not wish to abandon our American friends. Australians are deeply invested in the survival of American democracy. That’s why we need to break up with Trump.
Dr Emma Shortis is the Director of the Australia Institute’s International & Security Affairs Program.
