By Lewis Jackson
SIDNEY (Reuters) – donald trump gave the AUKUS defense pact a “warm welcome” during a meeting with former Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrisonthe latter said, one of the few public signals about Trump’s views on the deal.
Morrison, who leaves office in 2022, met with Trump on Tuesday at the former president’s home in New York for talks that covered AUKUS, China’s assertiveness in the Indo-Pacific and the threat to Taiwan, he said. in a post on X.
“These were issues we discussed regularly when we were both in office,” Morrison said on Wednesday.
“Once again, the former president has shown his true appreciation for the value he places on the Australia-US alliance and their shared role in supporting what our friend Shinzo Abe called a free and open Indo-Pacific.”
Trump, the presumptive Republican candidate to take over President Joe Biden in November’s presidential elections, he did not formally declare his position on the pact and his office did not immediately respond to questions about the meeting.
Trump’s views on the pact, signed with Australia and Britain after leaving office in 2021, are a concern for Australia, which was promised up to five US Virginia-class submarines in a deal designed to counter China’s power in the Indo-Pacific.
Sales are expected to begin in the early 2030s, when the U.S. Navy’s submarine fleet will shrink to a historic low, but some analysts have warned that Trump’s America First doctrine could lead him to cancel or delay transfers.
Morrison said Trump gave the pact a “warm welcome” during the conversation, adding in a later interview with state broadcaster ABC that he was “very encouraged” about AUKUS’s prospects.
Asked about Wednesday’s meeting, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese repeated his government’s view that the deal made strategic sense regardless of who was in the White House.
“I presume anyone who looks at this… will say that the agreements… are very solid and in the interests of all those who support a safer and more peaceful region and world,” he told ABC radio.
(Reporting by Lewis Jackson; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)
