Donald Trump’s ally, Carla Sands, says Australia should trade less with China: ‘This is not a friendly nation’

Australia should do more business with Western allies instead of China, one of Donald Trump’s top allies has said.

Carla Sands served in the first Trump Administration, firstly on the President’s Transition Finance Committee and Economic Advisory Council in 2016 before becoming his Ambassador to Denmark, which administers Greenland — a province the US President has threatened to acquire sparking a row with Europe and NATO.

Ms Sands, now chairs the Foreign Policy Initiative at the Trump-aligned think tank America First Policy Institute, and remains a steadfast ally of the President, having fundraised for him and introduced him to key staff.

When asked if the MAGA movement would defend Tawain from a Chinese takeover, she said that while she could not speak for the US President, China could never take Taiwan “because it would destroy our economies.”

She praised Australia as “starting to step up more” by working to shore up capability by acquiring nuclear-propelled submarines from the US and UK through AUKUS.

She said that Europe’s antagonism towards the US and it’s failure to help fight Iran meant that NATO was no longer ironclad and was a sign that Europe would not help the US out in the case of a conflict with China either.

“The NATO allies behaved the way they did, I think it changes NATO forever and we’ll probably be looking at the Middle Eastern allies, at Japan, more the AUKUS area too, and maybe less at Western Europe,” she said.

“I don’t think that our allies are showing that they’re actually going to be there for us, so I think we need to be more strategic.

“Considering that we’re countering China. Russia is a troublemaker, but China’s a threat, a huge military, and their economic might. I’s an asymmetrical war. They are at war in every way, but kinetically with the West every day.”

Ms Sands was speaking exclusively to the Latika Takes podcast on the sidelines of the Delphi Economic Forum in Greece. She described China as a “gangster” country with which Australia was “heavily involved.”

“You guys are a great mining country and so we think that it would be great for you to do more business with the Western allies than with China, who cheats and abuses in every, I mean, every which way and coerces,” she said.

“They threatened us that they wouldn’t send the rare earth minerals we needed. They wouldn’t send the pharmaceutical precursors so we wouldn’t have the drugs we needed for our people during a pandemic.

“And so this is not a friendly nation. We want to have a good relationship with China, but they have to act like a normal nation, not be gangsters.”

It is not the first time Australia’s dependence on Chinese iron-ore exports has raised eyebrows.

Anne-Marie Trevelyan, the UK’s former Indo-Pacific Minister has also queried Australia’s dependence on Chinese trade given the security threats posed by the CCP’s aggressive behaviour and quest to dominate shipping lanes.

China has been Australia’s largest two-way trading partner for nearly two decades with iron ore comprising around one-third of exports.

Even during the pandemic, when the Chinese Communist Party coerced Australia in retaliation for seeking an inquiry into the origins of the COVID pandemic, it did not make a dent in China’s lead on the trading table.

The Albanese Government dropped Australia’s legal case against China in the World Trade Organisation, contesting the huge duties China slapped on Australian producers in favour of “stabilising” the bilateral relationship.

In 2024-2025, China accounted for 24 per cent of Australia’s trade with the world, valued $309 billion, according to the Department for Foreign Affairs and Trade.

Exports were valued at $189 billion, of which nearly $100 billion were from iron ore alone.

By contrast, Australia’s exports to the US are valued at $59.9 billion, but the US is the largest importer of services into Australia.

Mr Trump imposed 10 per cent tariffs on Australia, as well as extra duties on steel as part of his so-called “Liberation Day” aimed at resetting what he said were global trade imbalances rigged against the United States.

This is despite the US running a trade surplus with Australia, with whom the US has a free trade agreement struck under former prime minister John Howard and President George W. Bush.

The US Supreme Court has since ruled against Mr Trump’s tarrifs. Ms Sands said Australia and other countries would be wise not to seek any repayment.

“Not all countries are gonna ask for them back and they’d be smart not to because the trade imbalance has been so abusive,” she warned.

She said the imbalance in trading with China was an example of the shift in America’s post-War economy that had led to her becoming a supporter, fundraiser and campaigner for Mr Trump, although she said it was more accurate to describe MAGA Republicans as “common sense Republicans.”

“They saw the Country Club Republicans behave in a way that’s arrogant, that shipped jobs and manufacturing offshore, and that hollowed out our towns and our middle class so that our middle class — even some of the doctors feel like they’re just hanging on financially, they’re not getting ahead like they were when I was a young person,” she said.

Asked why Mr Trump had not used his influence and the United States superpower status to form more trade and supply-chain coalitions such as the one he is forming with Australia and other allies for critical minerals, Ms Sands said businesses were to blame.

“Fundamentally, it’s because our biggest companies across the globe want to do business in China and have turned a blind eye to the abuses and even encourage more investment,” she said.

“So between the companies wanting access to the market share and investing and doing production in China because it’s cheaper.”

She said this was why the US economy had done well for the rich and the very poor but had caused the middle class to lose their wonderful lives.

“Our politicians, our leaders, state and federal level, encourage businesses to ship those jobs away. It’s greener not to make the production in the United States. It’s cleaner environment, and let’s just ship those jobs because it’s cheaper production,” she said.

“Meanwhile, who took it on the chin? It was the middle class and that man that was going to the factory, that woman that was going to the factory in manufacturing.

“Now today, that manufacturing’s gonna look different as President Trump brings the manufacturing back with his tariffs, which he got trillions of dollars of investment.

“Those investments are starting to come in and we can see investments in energy production, investments in ship building, investments across the board, all different kinds of heavy industries and steel making.”