Australia’s 180-degree shift from 5 years ago: China in favour; US out

An Australian tour revealed the nation’s growing sentiment of warming to China, while Trump’s tariffs and foreign policy have increasingly seen the US viewed with suspicion or as ‘unsafe’.

Photo: AP Australian comedian Jenny Tian set off a wave of deep laughter across an Adelaide audience at a recent comedy festival by saying she had tired of democracy at home.

So, Tian explained, she moved to the US to give “fascism” a whirl instead.

The 30-year-old showbiz pro was born to Chinese parents, making her race a rarity in Western stand-up comedy.

But the crowd was a near sell-out.

I saw Tian’s March performance during a visiting media tour of Australia after days of meetings with national officials and chats with academics.

I found Tian’s joke to be a metaphor for Australia’s world outlook in 2026: resentment towards the US and a warming towards China.

US President Donald Trump’s tariffs have raised too many doubts for Australia over the past 14 months about where to ship exports, such as the wine I was served almost every night during the trip.

Now the Iran war is also fanning a near-panic about bottlenecks in a global supply chain that ends with Australian farmers – according to snippets of a legislative debate we heard at a parliament session.

As a result, Australians feel a “growing reservation towards Trump”, said He Baogang, an Academy of Social Sciences in Australia fellow who we met at a round-table chat.

I’m American and on the trip avoided sharing my view on US politics – part of our professional ethic as journalists.

Australian comedian Jenny Tian quips about the US during an act in Adelaide.

Photo: handout But Australians heard my accent and wondered.

As one trade association head informed me at a lunch meeting, followed by hearty anti-Washington chatter: “You sound like you may be from North America.” China for its part has quit what one scholar we met called A$20 billion worth of “economic coercion”.

She meant Chinese tariffs and other barriers against top Australian exports, such as wine, barley, beef and lobsters.

Beijing restricted those exports in 2020 after Australia urged China to investigate the origin of Covid-19, which was first reported in Wuhan.

Those Australian products are trading normally again, our government contacts told us, and other exporters are giving China a go now because of its market size.

The Archie Rose distillery, for example, announced after a bottomless taste tour at its sprawling Sydney plant that i

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