Will Donald Trump thwart Australia’s submarine deal with the US?

Australian submarines are once against in the spotlight in the press today. It comes amidst a war of words between Donald Trump and former Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull. Turnbull was PM in 2016 when Australia announced the deal to order submarines from France. Five years later in 2021, the Australian government reneged on the deal and said it would be ordering from the US instead after forming an alliance with the UK. In an interview with The Guardian last week, Turnbull said “America is a much less dependable ally under Trump than it was” and that Australia faces a real possibility that it may never get the submarines. Trump reacted angrily to his comments this week, calling Turnbull a weak and ineffective leader in the past, who led Australia from behind. In response, Turnbull doubled down on his comments this week, decrying Australia’s timid approach to the US and saying it should not continue “bipartisan gas-lighting”.

The tensions comes after the current Australian government expressed anger over US tariffs on Australian imports. The Sydney Morning Herald reports that the Trump administration’s decision not to exempt Australia from 25 percent tariffs on steel and aluminium exports has sparked anger from Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. He called the move unjustified and very harsh. In its analysis, the Sydney Morning Herald writer Matthew Knott says the decision not to grant exemptions to Australia shows that Australia’s special relationship with the US is over. Moreover, Trump’s decision shows that the future of this alliance will be defined not with trust but transaction. Former high ranking members of the Australian military such as the now retired Admiral Chris Barrie are now calling for a plan B. Submarine specialist Peter Briggs makes the same case in the Guardian. He even makes a surprising suggestion: going back to the French contract! It’s prompted this smug reaction from Le Figaro newspaper, which reports that after all that, Australia could find itself without any submarines!

No domain is immune Donald Trump’s politics and much less so the Sundance film festival. Entertainment website Deadline reports that by the end of April, the new home of the Sundance Film Festival will be announced. The festival has been held in Sundance, Utah, a mountain resort town for the past 40 years. It’s now facing stiff competition from other states like Colorado and Ohio. Utah was hoping to keep the festival in the state, by putting a bid forward for Salt Lake City and Park City. Those plans could be thwarted by a new state bill to ban the LGBTQ plus rainbow flag from schools and state government buildings. Clearly, this would put it at odds with the festival’s inclusive and diverse ethos.

Here in France, Le Parisien today reveals a spying scandal within the finance ministry. Le Parisien speaks of a mole working for Algeria. The civil servant is accused of having delivered information on Algerian opposition members living in France with the help of an Algerian consulate worker. The Algerian daily TSA calls the allegations curious, noting that the arrests were made last December and came right after a former terrorist in Algeria revealed that French intelligence allegedly tried to use him to create terror cells in Algeria.

Finally, the Brazilian government is clearing out kilometres of Amazon rainforest. According to the BBC and other media outlets, including the Daily Telegraph, the government is clearing out kilometres of Amazon rainforest land in Belem. The reason? To build a highway to transport dignitaries later this year for the COP30 UN climate change conference. Somehow the Brazilian government missed the terrible irony on this one. 

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