The AUKUS deal between the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia continues to generate scandal. Ostensibly a massive military procurement deal, AUKUS is in fact a barely concealed attempt to contain China. And while doubts about the project have long abounded Down Under, they have now spread to Washington, DC, casting further uncertainty over the deal’s future.

AUKUS locks Australia into a decades-long contract worth US$245 billion to purchase US- (and later UK-) made nuclear-powered submarines. But both the United States and the UK have admitted they will be unable to provide these unless Australia substantially underwrites the expansion of both nations’ industrial bases — and perhaps not even then. According to the deal, if all somehow goes as planned, Australia will receive a few secondhand submarines sometime in the 2030s, and even then, they will remain under US control.

At least, that was AUKUS before Donald Trump’s second presidency. After taking over the White House, the Trump administration looked at this Biden-engineered piece of highway robbery and decided it wasn’t extortionate enough. Now senior staff from Trump’s Office of Management and Budget are advising Washington to “more heavily leverage” the deal “because the Australians have been noticeably fickle.” And Trump has ordered a review of AUKUS, intending to update it to include ironclad guarantees that Australia will back the United States in a hypothetical war against China.