A superpower loomed large as Australians headed to the polls. It wielded trade barriers as a means of political coercion, imperiling Australia’s export-dependent economy.
Three years ago that country was China, which had imposed punishing restrictions on many Australian exports, sent spy ships lurking near Australia’s west coast and struck an alarming military pact with a regional neighbor, the Solomon Islands.
This time, as Australians cast ballots on Saturday, that external factor is the United States and President Trump.
“We’ve forgotten that China was introducing tariffs on Australian goods. What’s the difference, with what Trump is doing?” said Scott Prasser, a public policy analyst and a former civil servant.
This election has the most fraught geopolitical backdrop in recent memory for Australia. President Trump has stirred up questions on whether it can depend on its longstanding military alliance with the United States. At the same time, its biggest trading partner, China, is expanding its influence closer and closer to Australian shores.
But for most Australian voters, domestic issues like inflation have been the dominant concern. Early in the campaign, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s center-left Labor Party was lagging behind the opposition in polls, reflecting frustration with a deepening cost-of-living crisis and ever-increasing housing prices.
The opposition leader, Peter Dutton, argued that Mr. Albanese had ignored bread-and-butter issues because he was too focused on a “woke” agenda, like Indigenous rights. Mr. Dutton channeled parts of Mr. Trump’s messaging, railing against diversity initiatives, pledging to cut tens of thousands of government jobs and floating the idea of revoking citizenship for dual nationals who have been convicted of a crime.
But political winds have shifted in Australia, buffeted by the global tumult unleashed by Mr. Trump, if to a far lesser extent than they did in another U.S. ally, Canada. Even though Australia hasn’t been in Mr. Trump’s crosshairs the same way Canada has, the latest political surveys in Australia show Labor has pulled ahead of Mr. Dutton’s conservative Liberal Party.
“We are Canada-lite. We don’t have the same exposure, but Trump is very unpopular among the Australian public,” said Darren Lim, a senior lecturer in politics and international relations at the Australian National University. “The U.S. plays a large role in our conception of where we are in the world.”
Mr. Trump plans to impose a 10 percent levy on most Australian imports, the base line rate of his so-called reciprocal tariffs, in addition to 25 percent on its steel and aluminum exports. During the campaign, both Mr. Albanese and Mr. Dutton have faced repeated questions on how they would manage the relationship with Washington. Responding to a question during their final debate on Sunday, both said that they trusted Mr. Trump.
But most Australians do not share their assessment. A recent poll by the Lowy Institute showed the Australian public’s trust in the United States had sunk to its lowest point in two decades, with two-thirds saying they either had not very much or no trust at all in their country’s most important ally. Voters were evenly split on whether Mr. Albanese or Mr. Dutton would be better at managing relations with Mr. Trump.
In recent weeks, Mr. Dutton has tried to distance himself from Mr. Trump. By the time a political ally of his uttered the words “make Australia great again” in mid-April, it was clear any association with Mr. Trump was a liability Mr. Dutton wanted to avoid. He deflected questions about whether the phrase reflected any ideological alignment with Mr. Trump.
Mr. Albanese’s party has tried to capitalize on the shifting public sentiments, decrying the foreign influence the opposition would bring. The conservatives, it has said, would bring “Americanization” and the “American approach” to Australian work conditions and health care.
China, on the other hand, has hardly figured in this year’s campaign. It’s a stark contrast to 2022, when the Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, had his name repeatedly invoked and his face plastered on election billboards. A spat over the origins of the coronavirus pandemic led to a downward spiral of relations between the two countries, with China charging as much as a 218.4 percent tax on Australian bottled wine.
Mr. Dutton, whose Liberal Party is in a longstanding coalition with the more conservative National Party, has dramatically toned down the tenor of how he speaks about China, even describing himself as “pro-China” last year. In the lead-up to the 2022 election, Mr. Dutton, as defense minister, had repeatedly played up China as a threat to Australia and contended that it would want the Labor Party to come into power.
Asked this week in their final debate about whether China was Australia’s biggest threat, Mr. Dutton made a point of saying “intelligence and defense agencies” were concerned about the Chinese Communist Party, rather than talking about his own assessment of the country more broadly.
Mr. Albanese, whose government has worked hard to stabilize relations with China during his term, and refraining from overt criticisms, was also resistant to identify it as the biggest risk to Australia’s national security, despite being pressed by the moderator.
“China is a major power in the region, which is seeking to increase its influence, but the relationship is complex as well because China is our major trading partner,” Mr. Albanese said.
Frank Bongiorno, a professor of history at the Australian National University, said both parties were avoiding addressing the major global challenges Australia faces and focusing on “small-target” domestic issues because of a dearth of clear ideas on either side about how to deal with Washington.
“I would have thought the most pressing issue is how it’s going to balance its traditional security relationship with the U.S., with the continuing overwhelming importance of its trading relationship with China,” he said. “They have been incredibly skilled at virtually keeping all this stuff off the agenda.”
But the uncertainty wrought by Mr. Trump may have turned voters toward the stability of the current government of Mr. Albanese, in a shift from the worldwide anti-incumbent sentiments that had been dominant last year, Mr. Bongiorno said.
“It looks at the moment like incumbency has been a benefit to Albanese, a sense of reassurance in an incredibly unsettling environment,” he said.
Victoria Kim is the Australia correspondent for The New York Times, based in Sydney, covering Australia, New Zealand and the broader Pacific region.
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