By Renju Jose and Peter Hobson
SYDNEY/CANBERRA (Reuters) -Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said on Monday he had a “warm conversation” with U.S. President Donald Trump on tariffs and the AUKUS defence pact after his centre-left Labor party decisively beat the conservatives in a weekend election.
Albanese was returned to office for a second term in a stunning comeback against the conservative Liberal-National coalition, which was ahead in polls as recently as February.
“I had a warm and positive conversation with President Trump … and I thank him for his very warm message of congratulations,” Albanese said during a media briefing.
“We talked about how AUKUS and tariffs will continue to engage, we will engage with each other on a face-to-face basis at some time in the future. And I thank him for reaching out in such a positive way.”
Albanese’s government in 2023 committed to spend A$368 billion ($238 billion) over three decades on AUKUS, Australia’s biggest ever defence project with the United States and Britain, to acquire nuclear-powered submarines.
Cost-of-living pressures and concerns about Trump’s policies had been among the top issues in the Australian election, polls showed.
About 48% of voters picked the uncertainties triggered by Trump as one of their top five concerns, one survey said, after his tariff plans sent shockwaves through global markets and raised concerns of voters on the impact on their pension funds.
Trump said earlier on Monday he did not know anything about the Australian election, though he praised Albanese.
“I don’t know anything about the election other than the man that won, he’s very good,” Trump told reporters at the White House after disembarking from the Marine One helicopter.
“Albanese I’m very friendly with … I can only say that he’s been very, very nice to me, very respectful to me.”
The United States enjoys a trade surplus with Australia but imposed a 10% tariff in April prompting Albanese to call it “not the act of a friend.”
LABOR MAJORITY
Labor is leading in 85 electorates in the 150-seat lower house as of Monday morning, as vote counting continued, data showed. At least a dozen seats are too close to call, with more than three-quarters of votes tallied.
Albanese, Australia’s first prime minister to win a second consecutive term in two decades, had struggled to lift ratings through 2024 as households grappled with high costs.
But inflation eased this year, and polls reversed in March after the conservatives unveiled proposals to slash the government workforce and ban federal employees from working from home, which was compared to Trump’s policies.
The shadow of Trump likely cost opposition leader Peter Dutton his seat, mirroring the Trump backlash in Canada’s election a week earlier, say analysts.
Opposition lawmaker Jason Wood, who is leading in his electorate in Melbourne’s southeast, said his party initially thought Trump’s election could boost the party’s fortunes, but those hopes were never realised.
“We would never have thought we would have had the fallout with Trump on … tariffs,” Wood told ABC Radio.
($1 = 1.5461 Australian dollars)
(Reporting by Renju Jose in Sydney AND Peter Hobson in Canberra; Editing by Michael Perry)
