A prominent Republican pollster has dropped a bombshell: Donald Trump doesn’t like Australia’s ambassador to the US, Kevin Rudd, and it’s costing Australia big time. The solution? Find someone Trump likes.
Brent Buchanan, a GOP pollster and messaging strategist, revealed that Trump places a lot of emphasis on personal relationships.
So, if Australia wants to secure a carve-out from Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs, they need to replace Rudd with someone the US President gets along with.
A Matter of Personal Relationships
When asked whether Trump didn’t like Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, who has yet to secure a face-to-face meeting with the US President, Buchanan pointed to Rudd as the main issue.
“I think he doesn’t like the current ambassador, and that’s one of the biggest issues,” he said.
Rudd, a former Australian Prime Minister, was appointed as the country’s ambassador to the US by Albanese in March 2023.
While he enjoys cross-party support in Australia, his position has been under threat since past negative comments about Trump surfaced.
The Past Comes Back to Haunt
In November 2022, Rudd called Trump’s first term “episodic craziness.” In other, since-deleted online comments, Rudd labelled Trump a “village idiot,” a “traitor to the West,” and “the most destructive president in history.”
But Buchanan believes Trump is open to cutting a deal with the right person. “Donald Trump’s a deal maker, and so if you bring a deal, he’s going to talk through it,” he added.
Australia’s Trade Dilemma
Australia is facing 10% tariffs on goods exported to the US, and like every US trading partner except the UK, 50% tariffs on aluminium and steel sent to America.
The deadline for the higher reciprocal tariffs to come into effect is July 9.
On Monday, Albanese said his government is continuing to push for the tariffs to be removed. “We’ll continue to put our case forward that it shouldn’t be 10 (per cent).
It should be zero. That is what a reciprocal tariff will be,” he told reporters in Canberra.
The Australian government has repeatedly called the trade measures an “act of economic self-harm.”
Foreign Minister Penny Wong is heading to Washington this week for “Quad” talks with her counterparts from the US, India, and Japan, where tariffs are expected to be high on the agenda.