Australian prime minister says he trusts Trump and Xi during debate

MELBOURNE, Australia — Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said he had no reason not to trust U.S. President Donald Trump or Chinese President Xi Jinping while debating his rival on Wednesday ahead of the May 3 election.

Albanese and opposition leader Peter Dutton faced off in a televised debate when Australian Broadcasting Corp. moderator, David Speers, asked both if they trusted the presidents of the United States and China, Australia’s most important security and trading partners, after they defied bilateral treaties negatively affecting Australian exports.

“Yeah, I have no reason not to” trust Trump, Albanese said. “I’ve had a couple of discussions with him.”

Albanese, whose center-left Labor Party government came to power in 2022, said the 10% tariffs the Trump administration had placed on Australian imports were as low as any country had been burdened with. “We made it very clear that was an act of self-harm by the United States,” he said.

Dutton, of the conservative Liberal Party, said he didn’t know either.

Dutton described Trump and Vice President JD Vance berating Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the Oval Office in February as “disgraceful” and “appalling.”

“We trust the United States and I don’t know the president. I’ve not met him,” Dutton said.

Beijing imposed a series of official and unofficial trade barriers against Australian exporters and barred minister-to-minister communications in 2020 after Dutton and other conservative Australian government ministers demanded an independent inquiry into the COVID-19 pandemic.

The trade barriers that had cost Australian exporters up to 20 billion Australian dollars ($13 billion) a year have been lifted since Albanese’s government was elected.

Dutton said he believed “very strongly” in Australia’s relationship with China, its biggest export market.

“I want to see the relationship grow and I want to see trust in the relationship. But we have to stand up for our sovereignty, we have to have a respectful relationship,” he said.

The two leaders will come together for a third and final leaders’ debate hosted by Nine Network television on April 22 before the election.