The litany of executive orders that have dropped on the White House website tell us plenty about what Australia can expect from a second Trump term’s foreign policies.

And there are plenty of implications of the America First agenda for Canberra.

Let’s begin with Unleashing Alaska’s Extraordinary Resource Potential. Trump’s intent to unlock Alaska’s ‘bounty of natural wealth’ by opening offshore drilling and greenlighting dormant liquified natural gas (LNG) export projects is a boon for the US economy and energy security.

But plans to ‘prioritize … the sale and transportation of Alaskan LNG to … allied nations within the Pacific region’ potentially cuts Australia’s grass. Our fractured LNG export ‘strategy’ is going to have to compete with likely cheaper LNG flooding the Asian market.

Trump’s America First Policy Directive on foreign policy is rather literal, simply stating that it will always put ‘America and its interests first’. Australian policymakers must now frame commitments, agreements, and policies regarding the US around this mandate.

Understanding that this is the way decisions will be taken in this new era will save time and public servants’ energy.

We can already apply the America First policy to one case study: AUKUS pillar one. Trump’s US can be expected to continue supporting the optimal pathway for several national interest reasons. First, Australia has already paid cash. Second, the rotation of US and British nuclear submarines through HMAS Stirling in Western Australia affords a ‘beachhead’ for US strategic depth in the Indo-Pacific. Third, Australia will give billions of dollars more to the US for Virginia class submarines.

America First? Tick.

Central to the America First era is Trump’s plan to block Chinese overreach into strategic regions of American interest. It’s not clear how the US might secure control of Greenland and the Panama Canal, but it’s quite clear why Trump wants to do it.

Canberra shares with Washington common interests and challenges posed by Beijing’s creeping territorialisation efforts in Antarctica. Antarctica is a strategic continent that needs much more work through the US-Australia alliance to protect it.

One obvious point of divergence is commitment to multilateralism. There appears to be zero reversal of this trend—Trump has signed an order to withdraw the US from the World Health Organization, and has signalled an intention to pull out of the Paris Agreement on climate change.

Further Trump presidential action is aimed at multilateralism. Significantly for Australia given the amount of US and other multilateral companies that have operations in our key industries, Washington is also ditching the OECD Global Tax Deal, which was negotiated by the Biden administration though never approved by Congress.

Representing 90 percent of global GDP, and signed by 136 countries and jurisdictions, it seeks to ensure big firms ‘pay a fair share of tax wherever they operate and generate profits’. Australia remains a fervent advocate for it, along with the remnants of most multilateral bodies, while Trump’s memorandum prioritises ‘sovereignty and economic competitiveness by clarifying that the Global Tax Deal has no force or effect in the United States’. This will be a problem for Australia.

An area of little divergence appears to be foreign aid. Australian efforts in this sector are dismal at best—roughly $4.7 billion in foreign aid was distributed in 2023-24, placing Canberra 26th out of 31 wealthy countries ranked for how much foreign aid they provide. Trump’s Reevaluating and Realigning United States Foreign Aid order might put pressure on Australia to ‘do more’—that is, spend more—in our region. The order freezes US aid while a review is undertaken and frames foreign aid to be ‘destabili(sing) world peace by promoting ideas in foreign countries that are directly inverse to harmonious and stable relations internal to and among countries’.

Trump’s declaration of a ‘national energy emergency’ might trigger a much-needed national debate in Australia about our persistent energy insecurity. Our nation sits on immense resource wealth yet has gone from being a global LNG export superpower to importing gas to meet domestic needs in less than a decade.

Trump’s memorandum on Restoring Accountability for Career Senior Executives needs little explanation as to how it could provide lessons for Canberra. Group-think and risk-adverse career public servants have hollowed out our public service’s ability to ‘faithfully fulfill … duties to advance the needs, policies, and goals’ of Australia.

The TikTok saga continues into the Trump 2.0 era. Never fear, watchers of MomTok—a group of Mormon ‘yummy mummies’ who post on TikTok, for the uninitiated— Trump’s attempt to find a compromise on an outright ban of TikTok gives the US government 75 days to get to the bottom of Beijing’s reach afforded by the popular app being used by 170 million Americans.

NSW Premier Chris Minns finds a ‘return to work’ ally in Trump, whose Return to In-Person Work mandate notes ‘all departments and agencies in the executive branch of Government shall, as soon as practicable, take all necessary steps to terminate remote work arrangements’. Again, this could energise debate here in Australia for similar measures.

Trade remains a concern for Australia. Will we, or wont we, be slapped with the tariff stick? Will Trump be able to separate bilateral trade relations from Australia’s lacklustre defence spending? Trump’s America First Trade Policy provides no clear answers. But the Albanese government needs to recognise that simply pointing to a healthy American trade surplus with Australia—saying ‘smile and wave boys’—might no longer pass Trump’s pub test.