Australia’s trust in the United States has plunged to a record low under the Trump administration, the latest Lowy Institute poll shows, with only 31 per cent of Australians expressing faith that the US would “act responsibly in the world”.
The annual poll is the nation’s most high-profile snapshot of how Australians see the world, and is closely tracked by foreign diplomats in Canberra.
This year’s survey shows that while Australians remain more suspicious of China than of the United States, the gap between the two great powers has almost entirely vanished, with trust in China rising eight points to 28 per cent.
Australians who said they trusted the US and China “somewhat” and “a great deal” over time has changed significantly. (Supplied: Lowy Institute)
That narrows the gap with the US to just three points, a vastly different picture from 2022, when 65 per cent of Australians said they trusted the US to act responsibly, and only 12 per cent said they trusted China.
Only 21 per cent of Australians said they trusted US President Donald Trump to do the right thing in world affairs, the lowest level of confidence in any US president in the history of the poll, and almost identical to the 20 per cent of Australians who expressed trust in Chinese President Xi Jinping.
The Lowy Institute’s poll author, Charles Lyons-Jones, said Australians had a “strong distaste for Trumpism and his policy agenda”.
“Australians unanimously disapprove of many of the Trump administration’s policies, like pressuring Denmark to relinquish sovereign control,” Mr Lyons-Jones said.
“They disapprove of the use of tariffs to coerce other countries to comply with US objectives.”
But despite cratering trust in the US and Mr Trump, the polls show a large majority of Australians are not rushing to ditch the US alliance, with 73 per cent saying it was either “very” or “fairly” important to Australia’s security.
That’s a sharp drop from the 83 per cent of Australians who said it was important to the nation’s security in 2024, but it is still substantially higher than the record low of 63 per cent it recorded under George W Bush in 2007 during the Iraq War.
Mr Lyons-Jones said there was a real “resilience” to the US alliance and that public opinion in favour of it “seemed to be capable of absorbing the shocks” thrown at it by Mr Trump.
“Australians are quite pragmatic about the geopolitical environment our country faces. They know that having a strong alliance is an important way of securing our interests in an international order that’s becoming competitive and challenging,” he said.
“Australians see a deteriorating security environment. And a majority of Australians still say they support US basing in Australia, which is significant given US force posture here.“
China ‘beneficiary’ of waning Trump trust
The poll also shows Australian attitudes to China are warming, with 61 per cent of those polled saying they see China more as an economic partner than as a security threat.
That’s an 11-point increase from last year’s poll, and the first time since 2020 that a clear majority of Australians have seen China in a more positive light.
In 2021, for example, when the bilateral relationship hit rock bottom and China imposed punitive tariffs on Australian exports worth billions of dollars, 63 per cent of Australians said they saw Beijing more as a security threat, while just 33 per cent saw it primarily as an economic partner.
Mr Lyons-Jones said Australians were increasingly pessimistic about Australia’s economic future, and might be viewing China with a different lens because it was a critical trading partner.
“I think that perceptions of China have improved given the importance of the trading relationship with China,” he said.
“But it’s impossible in my view to disentangle the distaste that Australians have for Trumpism from these numbers.
“China is a clear beneficiary of Australians’ waning trust in Trump.“
The poll also shows that Japan, New Zealand and other liberal democracies continue to enjoy some of the highest levels of trust among Australians.
The Lowy Institute asked Australians how much they trusted each country to act responsibly in the world. (Supplied: Lowy Institute)
Japan remained the most trusted power, with 89 per cent of Australians saying they believed it would act responsibly in the world, followed by Germany at 83 per cent and the United Kingdom at 81 per cent.
Attitudes towards India and Indonesia remain lukewarm, with 57 per cent of those polled saying they trusted Indonesia and just 50 per cent saying they trusted India.
New Zealand once again topped the “feelings thermometer”, which asks Australians to say how warmly they feel towards 20 or so countries.
Meanwhile, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney inspired more confidence than any other world leader in the poll, with 66 per cent expressing confidence in him, just ahead of New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi.
