King Charles III charmed his way through Washington during the week with a mix of royal air, humour and good old-fashioned English charm.
In a town that has grown accustomed to Donald Trump’s unfiltered monologues, obsequious odes from his underlings and awkward Oval Office appearances by foreign leaders, the King’s visit was a breath of fresh air widely regarded as a diplomatic masterstroke.
Political scientist and Eurasia Group founder Ian Bremmer called it “the most deft diplomacy – by a long margin – that we’ve seen visiting the Trump administration this term”.
The gesture that won the highest praise was Charles’ personal gift to Trump, presented during the White House state dinner on Tuesday night – the bell from the HMS Trump, a British-made submarine that launched during World War II and spent most of its life as part of an Australian squadron.
Charles described the vessel as an “AUKUS predecessor”, repeating his enthusiasm for the trilateral pact between Australia, the US and UK. In so doing, he put Australia at the centre of arguably his warmest moment with Trump.
For AUKUS proponents, it was manna from heaven – and that was exactly as the King intended it.
Sophia Gaston, a foreign policy researcher and geopolitical analyst at King’s College London, who is deeply involved in AUKUS, said the existence of the HMS Trump – and how to capitalise on it – had been a “constant theme of discussion” since the president returned to office.
Some people in the AUKUS community had even mused whether the SSN-AUKUS – the next-generation nuclear-powered submarine Australia and Britain will build together – should be renamed the SSN-Trump, she told this masthead.
“This is a generational project, so it was ultimately thought it would be best to retain a more neutral name. But there was definitely a strong feeling that we needed to find a way of eliciting the president’s personal buy-in for the AUKUS endeavour, and to underscore the deep links between the allied naval forces, and so every effort was then made to find a tangible souvenir from the HMS Trump to achieve both goals in this historic moment.”
The King’s nod to AUKUS was noted by its champions in Congress, too, such as Republican Robert Aderholt of Alabama, who said he appreciated the shout-out.
It was an important week for Australia’s relationship with the Trump administration, involving what might best be described as a mixed bag of developments.
Trump finally nominated a new US ambassador to Canberra, 15 months into his term. He selected David Brat, a former Republican congressman from Virginia, now a senior executive at a Christian university. He is also an economics professor and deeply religious theological scholar.
Brat was part of the pre-Trump Tea Party movement of conservative Republicans, and ousted the then House of Representatives majority leader, Eric Cantor, in a surprise primary victory in 2014.
White House spokeswoman Olivia Wales said Brat was a champion for Trump’s America First policies, and the right choice to serve US interests in Canberra.
“The United States looks forward to strengthening our long-standing partnership with Australia through economic investments, defence co-operation, critical minerals and more,” she said.
Charles Edel, the Australia chair at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank, said Brat’s closeness to Trump’s way of thinking made him well-placed to steer an important relationship.
“Speaking directly to decision-makers in Washington and accurately conveying the administration’s positions are two of the most important attributes an ambassador can possess,” Edel said.
“By every indication in the public record, Brat shares the president’s policy views, and hails from the right-wing of the Republican Party.
“While his views on defence issues, AUKUS and critical minerals are less clear, if he is confirmed, it’s a safe bet that he will accurately reflect the White House position on those issues.”
Brat will also need to navigate the trade relationship between Australia and the US, including the Albanese government’s opposition to Trump’s tariffs, and its determination to proceed with several initiatives that anger this administration – particularly on technology.
One such matter resurfaced last week when Prime Minister Anthony Albanese recommitted to the News Bargaining Incentive to tax social media giants for their use of Australian journalism. The policy applies a 2.25 per cent levy to the Australian revenue of Meta, Google, TikTok and others, but that figure can be reduced – likely to about 1.5 per cent, Albanese said – if the companies strike deals with local media companies.
The Trump administration has condemned this policy before, and it is on the radar of the US trade office. Asked for comment, White House spokesman Kush Desai said Trump would defend America’s world-leading technology sector from digital services taxes and “other forms of foreign extortion”.
Albanese is sticking to his guns. “We’re a sovereign nation,” he said on Tuesday when asked about Trump’s opposition. He has previously identified this issue as one that is not up for negotiation.
David Inserra, a tech policy analyst at the libertarian Cato Institute, said the administration had shown it was willing to make use of various trade tools at its disposal to punish countries that implemented these taxes.
“I could see a place where this does get brought up in broader trade disputes saying, ‘You are unfairly going after our industry to favour your local media industry’,” he said.
And just a week after Canberra announced plans to increase defence spending to 3 per cent of gross domestic product by 2033, the Pentagon issued a gentle reminder that it still believed Australia had a way to go before it was considered to be pulling its weight.
In a statement to the US Congress, Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth said South Korea – which has committed to spending 3.5 per cent of gross domestic product on defence by 2035 – was America’s “model ally” in the Indo-Pacific. Hegseth said Australia understood the need to keep lifting its defence spending.
The paragraph illustrated that while Trump wavered when asked about this subject during Albanese’s visit to Washington last year, the Pentagon has not abandoned its push. Its policy boss, undersecretary Elbridge Colby, made clear on social media that this was still core business.
“Our NATO and Asian allies must do more to meet President Trump’s global standard of spending 5 per cent of GDP on defence – 3.5 per cent on core military spending and 1.5 per cent on security-related investments,” he said on X on Friday (US time).
Hegseth, at the hearing, appeared sceptical that some US allies would act on their pledges, without naming any.
“It remains to be seen whether some of our allies actually step up to their commitments,” he said. “But that is the hope.”
Get a note directly from our foreign correspondents on what’s making headlines around the world. Sign up for our weekly What in the World newsletter.
