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There was plenty of amusement at Ambassador Kevin Rudd’s expense at the long-awaited meeting between Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and United States President Donald Trump.

For many Australians, Mr Rudd finally got his comeuppance for his characteristic rudeness, with Mr Trump giving him a presidential roast in the Cabinet Room in front of his most trusted advisers – “I don’t like him, and I don’t think I ever will.”

But it is highly unlikely that Mr Albanese will take the churlish advice of Opposition Leader Sussan Ley and bring Mr Rudd back home. The pair go back a long way (remember that Albanese was always a Rudd man, not a Gillard man).

Stand-Off with China

The one person who won’t be amused by the meeting will be the president of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), Xi Jinping.

The PRC was unhappy that the meeting took place at all, and the Chinese fighter aircraft releasing flares within 30 metres of an Australian military plane in the South China Sea in the lead-up to the meeting was surely no coincidence.

The meeting could not have gone better for Albanese, and the alignment of events in recent months has been extremely fortuitous for Australia.

“We’ve been long-term, long-time allies,” President Trump told reporters.

“I would say there’s never been anybody better. We’ve fought wars together; we never had any doubts. It’s a great honour to have you as my friend.”

The reason for the effusive praise from Trump goes to the titanic trade and geopolitical manoeuvring that is occurring between the US and China.

Trump is engaged in a trade stand-off with China as he seeks to rebuild the US manufacturing base back home, and is also seeking to check Xi Jinping’s military ambitions, including its claims on Taiwan.

Critical Minerals Agreement

The $US8.5 billion ($A13 billion) deal signed by the two leaders shifts the supply of critical minerals and rare earths away from China while bolstering the commercial and defence industries of Australia and the US.

Under the agreement, both nations will now move within their separate regulatory systems to slash red tape and fast-track approval timelines for critical minerals and rare earths projects.

The aim of the new framework agreement – signed by both Trump and Albanese in a friendly White House meeting on October 20 – is to secure supply chains to support the “manufacturing of defence and advanced technologies” while bolstering the industrial bases of America and Australia.

The framework agreement comes shortly after Beijing shocked the world by giving notice of its plan to exert much greater control from December over global rare earth and critical mineral supply chains.

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer warned that the move by China could halt the supply of smartphones, cars and even household appliances across the globe.

Mr Bessent made clear that Washington would move swiftly to diversify supply chains and warned that, if Beijing did not shift course, then the US and its allies around the world would need to “decouple”.

“If China wants to be an unreliable partner to the world, then the world will have to decouple,” he said.

That would be a nightmare scenario for Australia, which is so heavily dependent on trade with China.

For the moment, however, Albanese will be able to bask in the afterglow of a meeting many feared would never happen.

President Trump has also given assurance that the AUKUS agreement is going ahead.

It will now be up to the PRC to respond, if at all, to this deal.

Amid fearful markets, Trump has attempted to take some of the heat out of the trade stand-off with China – an admission that Xi Jinping also had cards at his disposal.

For Albanese, this meeting will certainly go down as one of the high notes of his prime ministership, but the unpredictability of the two giants he is dealing with is not something he has any control over.

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Republished with thanks to News Weekly. Image courtesy of The White House/Wikimedia Commons.