Trump to review Aukus nuclear submarine pact with Australia and UK

The $240bn (£176bn) Aukus agreement involving Australia, the US and the UK is a strategic security partnership aimed primarily at helping Australia acquire nuclear submarines using US and British technology.

Under Aukus, Australia was scheduled to make a $2bn (£1.47bn) payment in 2025 to the US to help boost its submarine shipyards and speed up lagging production rates of Virginia-class submarines to allow the sale of up to three US submarines to Australia from 2032.

The first $500m (£368m) payment was made when Australian defence minister Richard Marles met with his US counterpart Pete Hegseth in February.

Mr Marles said on Thursday that Canberra was confident the pact would proceed and that their government would closely work with the Trump administration.

“I am very confident this is going to happen,” he told ABC News, adding that Aukus was in the strategic interests of all three countries. The trilateral project is believed to be aimed at countering the military might of China.

He said that a review of the deal signed under former US president Joe Biden was not a surprise. “This is a multi-decade plan,” he said. “There will be governments that come and go, and I think whenever we see a new government a review of this kind is going to be something which will be undertaken.”

The statement came after media reports said the US was reviewing its commitment to the pact. It was first reported by the Financial Times, citing six people familiar with the matter.

“The department is reviewing Aukus as part of ensuring that this initiative of the previous administration is aligned with the president’s ‘America first’ agenda,” a Pentagon official was quoted as saying. “This means ensuring the highest readiness of our service members, that allies step up fully to do their part for collective defence and that the defence industrial base is meeting our needs.”

The Pentagon’s top policy adviser, Elbridge Colby, who has previously raised concerns that the US could lose submarines to Australia at a critical time for military deterrence against China, will be a key figure in the review, examining the production rate of Virginia-class submarines, Mr Marles confirmed.

Australia and the UK have both faced pressure from the White House to increase their military spending. While the UK has heeded the demand, Australia has resisted it.

Mr Albanese is expected to meet Mr Trump for the first time next week on the sidelines of the G7 meeting. They are likely to discuss Washington’s demand that Australia increase its defence spending from 2 per cent to 3.5 per cent of its GDP.

Mr Albanese has said Australia’s defence spending will rise to 2.3 per cent but has declined to commit to America’s target.

The possibility of the deal collapsing has caused anxiety in London and Canberra but has been met with cheers in Beijing, experts said.

John Lee, an Indo-Pacific expert at Washington’s conservative Hudson Institute think tank, said the Pentagon review was “primarily an audit of American capability” and whether it could afford to sell up to five nuclear submarines when it wasn’t meeting its own production targets.

“Relatedly, the low Australian defence spending and ambiguity as to how it might contribute to a Taiwan contingency is also a factor,” Mr Lee said.

John Hamre, president of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies and a former senior Pentagon official, told a Lowy Institute seminar in Sydney on Thursday there was a perception in Washington that “the Albanese government has been supportive of Aukus but not really leaning in on Aukus”, with defence spending being part of this.