US President Donald Trump and Australia’s Malcolm Turnbull will meet later Thursday to steady a long-standing alliance after relations soured at a time of growing tensions in the Asia-Pacific.
The two leaders will meet on the decommissioned aircraft carrier, the Intrepid, in New York, to mark the 75th Anniversary of the Battle of the Coral Sea.
The World War II fight against Japanese forces forged an alliance that has seen Australia pitch in alongside the United States in every major conflict since.
However, Turnbull and Trump’s relationship has been less amicable.
This will be their first encounter since a tetchy phone call rattled ties soon after Trump took office, when he took issue with a deal that the US would take in refugees from Australia’s Pacific island camps.
Trump reportedly exploded and cut short the call when he was told about a deal to move some refugees from Australia to America.
The president took to Twitter afterward to label the agreement struck with president Barack Obama’s administration as “dumb.”
The icy start was cooled further by Washington’s withdrawal from a trans-Pacific trade agreement that would have given Australian businesses greater access to the US and key regional markets.
But the crisis over North Korea’s nuclear and weapons programs and a fence-mending trip by Vice President Mike Pence to Sydney appears to have eased tensions somewhat.
After meeting Turnbull, Pence said the United States would take the refugees but added it “doesn’t mean we admire the agreement.”
Turnbull, like Trump a businessman-turned-politician, has said he is “delighted” to meet with the US leader and affirm the relationship.
“The single biggest thing is for the two leaders to establish some kind of rapport and get comfortable with one another,” said Simon Jackman, chief executive at the United States Studies Centre in Sydney.
Still, the advent of Trump has invigorated a debate over Australia’s place in the world and whether its future lies with an unpredictable United States, or a closer relationship with China, its top trading partner.
Several former senior Australian diplomats have also urged Canberra to rethink ties with the US in light of China’s rise.
James Laurenceson from the Australia-China relations institute at Sydney’s University of Technology, said Turnbull would be receptive to Trump, “but at the same time he will always have in the back of his mind that Australia’s economic interests are well and truly tied up in China”.
“It doesn’t mean that we won’t criticize China or shy away from that, but it will be factored in to it, in perhaps a way that it’s not factored into US decision-making,” he added.
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