MARK RILEY: Are Trump and Albo heading for a rocky G7 showdown?

Anthony Albanese and other world leaders will be treated to a very special local delight as they gather outside Calgary in the Canadian Rockies from Monday for the G7 meeting.

Local company North Water has produced a commemorative green G7 bottle specially for the event.

They will deliver an endless supply of natural water from the famous Rocky Mountain springs to wet the leaders’ whistles during their three-day talkfest.

The company boasts that its alpine water delivers “a taste of pure, uncompromised refreshment drawn from the heart of the earth”.

But the leaders will find another message in the bottle.

North Water offers a “plastic-free alternative” to its main competitors, making all its bottles from thin Canadian aluminium.

That aluminium is produced in smelters around Quebec and exported across the border to a bottle manufacturer in Ohio.

And therein lies the message.

The Canadian aluminium that the leaders will be raising to their lips is now subject to a 50 percent tariff thanks to one G7 participant’s intemperate trade war.

The water probably won’t pass Donald Trump’s lips. He’s more a Diet Coke sort of guy. But the irony won’t be lost on the other participants, including Albanese.

The much-anticipated sidelines meeting between Albanese and Trump hasn’t been officially locked in.

That’s not unusual. These things are normally a bit ad hoc. Each leader will have a list of the contemporaries they want to chat with one-on-one. Albanese will be on Trump’s dance card. It will just be a matter of finding time in the proceedings for them to get their heads together during a break.

We assumed it would all be about trade. But now the Pentagon’s review of AUKUS has appeared on the horizon.

What is Trump doing? It is hard to know for sure.

US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth assured Defence Minister Richard Marles at the Shangri-la Dialogue in Singapore two weeks ago that Trump supported AUKUS.

But, of course, Trump is well known for supporting things until he doesn’t.

The review will examine whether the agreement meets Trump’s “America First” objectives.

On face value, it seems self-evident that it does.

Part of Australia’s $370 billion contribution will go towards buying at least three Virginia-class submarines from the US with an option to buy two more.

We have already paid the US $US500 million ($A770m) as a first instalment on the $US3b ($4.6b) we’ve agreed to contribute towards building up America’s military industrial base to increase its production of nuclear-powered submarines.

That helps America first in a big way.

But so does the broader strategic objective of the agreement, combining the underwater assets of the US, Australia and the UK to defend the Indo-Pacific against any threat posed from China, Russia and North Korea.

That is why the Albanese Government appears reasonably relaxed about this review.

Marles says it is natural that the Trump Administration would want to review the progress of an agreement of this magnitude signed by its predecessor.

The Starmer Government in the UK had done the same thing and determined that it was a good deal.

There are concerns, though, about the past comments of the man who will head the US review — Under Secretary for Defence Elbridge Colby.

Colby declared himself last year as an “AUKUS sceptic”. He said it would be “crazy” if resources were to go “to the wrong place” at a time when US submarine production was falling behind.

Colby has also publicly supported Hegseth’s suggestion that Australia should lift its defence spending to 3.5 per cent of GDP, which equates to an extra $40b a year.

And that could be the link.

As well as being a Diet Coke guy, Donald Trump is a deal guy.

There is a suspicion in government here that the timing of this review might have been manufactured to create some artificial uncertainty about AUKUS, which Trump could use as leverage on Albanese to lift defence spending.

Albanese insisted this week that Australia should and would make its own independent decisions on how and where it spends its money on defence.

He is right to do that.

But he will still go to Calgary with a new intention to ensure Donald Trump doesn’t use the commemorative bottles to pour cold Rockies water over AUKUS.