IRON LADY – HEAVY METAL

May 1, 2026

~ by Alan Dupont. Originally published in The Australian on 1st May, 2026.

Sanai Takaichi. Remember that name. Dubbed the “Iron Lady”, Takaichi’s first official visit to Australia as prime minister is the ideal time to explore the new defence, trade, investment and technology opportunities that her premiership portends. This won’t happen unless our political, business and university elites grasp Japan’s future trajectory and get to know the personality, and convictions, of a leader who is likely to be around longer than most of her predecessors.

Japan’s first female prime minister is leading a quiet revolution in her country following her new coalition’s crushing electoral victory in February. Determined to fundamentally change how Japan thinks about itself and its place in the world, Takaichi’s ambitious reform agenda touches on virtually every area of domestic policy – from education, technology and industrial policy to energy, population, citizenship, migration and the ossified political system. She wants to reduce the membership of the House of Representatives by 10 percent, establish “an electoral system for the times” and toughen up citizenship requirements for migrants in response to rising anti-foreign sentiment.
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Elites failed to heed warnings to build national resilience

March 25, 2026

~ by Alan Dupont. Originally published in The Australian on 25th March, 2026.

Labor’s failure to grasp the implications of the new world disorder have been on full display in recent weeks as war in the Middle East roils our economy, fuelling inflation and threatening serious food and energy shortages.

The Albanese government’s reactive and piecemeal response reveals a lack of preparedness for a crisis that many have warned about and should have been anticipated.

Our over-reliance on imported fuel and fertilisers has been pointed out repeatedly.

However, little has been done to address these crucial supply chain vulnerabilities. Instead, we have policy on the run.
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The fight with China over the Darwin Port

July 21, 2025

A decade ago, a Chinese company was given the green light to take control of the Darwin port, which is key Australian infrastructure. Now, the Albanese Government is scrambling to get it back in Australian hands, in a move that risks antagonising China, while being welcomed by the United States.

Today, veteran defence analyst Alan Dupont, who until recently was the Defence and National Security Advocate for the Northern Territory Government, focused on defence investment in the NT. He explains why the deal was allowed in the first place and whether Chinese control really poses a risk to national security.

Listen to the podcast.

Featured: Alan Dupont, chief executive of geopolitical risk consultancy The Cognoscenti Group

In a tougher, more dangerous world, the US remains our best option

July 18, 2025

~ by Alan Dupont. Originally published in The Australian on 18th July, 2025.

Contrasting the bonhomie of Anthony Albanese’s visit to China with his less than effusive embrace of Donald Trump’s America, an intergalactic visitor could be forgiven for concluding that China, not the US, is our principal ally and closest friend.

Seldom has the tension between our security alliance with the US and our trade relationship with China been so starkly exposed. The optics are damning. While the Prime Minister talks enthusiastically about increasing trade, tourism and cultural contacts, his words are jarringly at odds with the unwelcome presence of Chinese naval ships monitoring the Australian and allied Talisman Sabre training exercise off the Queensland coast.
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Albanese’s trump card: our shovel-ready rare earth mines

June 13, 2025

~ by Alan Dupont. Originally published in The Australian on 13th June, 2025.

Australia’s world class critical minerals endowment will figure prominently in Anthony Albanese’s pitch to Donald Trump for tariff relief should they meet in person for the first time at the G7 summit of the world’s advanced economies in Canada next week.

This will be a crucial test of the Prime Minister’s ability to manage his notoriously capricious counterpart and quarantine Australia from the worst effects of Trump’s disruptive, America First approach to international trade and national security, underlined by Washington’s surprise decision to review the AUKUS defence agreement.

If Albanese wants tariff concessions and AUKUS to proceed, he needs to offer something Trump wants other than platitudes about our perennial trade deficits with the US and enduring loyalty as an ally. That may have worked in 2016 aided by golfing legend Greg Norman’s star-power. But Trump unbridled is more ruthlessly transactional in his second coming.
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Insurance and Credit Forum for investors

June 4, 2025

Dr Alan Dupont was interviewed by Mark Beardow, Chief Investment Officer for iCare, at the Insurance and Credit Forum for investors in Sydney on 4 June at the Intercontinental Hotel, Double Bay.

As the adverse conseq­uences of Donald Trump’s crash-through style bite, buyer’s remorse sets in among his MAGA base

April 12, 2025

~ by Alan Dupont. Originally published in The Australian on 12th March, 2025.

Despite a relief surge in global markets on Thursday AEST triggered by Donald Trump’s unexpected 90-day tariff pause on “those who don’t retaliate”, the US President’s Liberation Day tariffs presage the most sweeping structural and normative change in the international trading system since 1945.

This was underscored by the imposition of a staggering 145 per cent tariff on imports from China, our major trading partner, sending US-China ties into a deep freeze and bringing a halt to most bilateral trade. Absent stimulus measures, this could cut China’s growth in half and have severe knock-on effects for the Australian and world economies.
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Sovereign and Security Forum hosted by Malcolm Turnbull ~ National Press Club

March 31, 2025

Dr Alan Dupont presented in Panel 4 at Sovereign and Security Forum on Monday 31st March, 2025.

How can Australia pursue its national interest in a “might is right” world? Can we save the multilateral furniture? Can we work with other countries to mitigate the economic damage from Trump’s tariff war? Is CPTPP a model for the future?

Listen to the recording here.

I believe the Trump ascendancy presages a radical change in Washington’s approach to the US alliance.

Mutual trust, shared interests and values have little or diminished weight. Trump, the dealmaker, doesn’t distinguish between friends and foes. This means the major beneficiaries of his second coming are more likely to be autocratic challengers, who have no love for America, at the expense of traditional friends and allies, who are being treated with disdain.
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We need a Plan B just in case ‘King Donald’ betrays our alliance

March 3, 2025

~ by Alan Dupont. Originally published in The Australian 0n 3rd March, 2025

Has Pax Americana reached its denouement – not at the hands of autocratic challengers but a wannabe American dictator named Donald Trump?

And will Trump’s love for authoritarian strong men embolden China’s Xi Jinping to flex his military muscles in the seas around Australia?

The great disrupter is trashing the assumptions, norms and architecture that have underpinned Australian and global security since 1945.
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The A to Xi of Trump’s tariffs – what a global tradewar might mean

February 1, 2025

~ by Alan Dupont. Originally published in The Australian on 1st February, 2025.

Donald Trump campaigned as the Tariff Man. All indications are that as president he intends to deliver on his promise to introduce sweeping tariffs on imports into the United States. Trump has announced plans to levy duties on China, Canada and Mexico on 1 February and he signed an executive order on the first day of his new administration directing officials to conduct a thorough review of US trade policy. Another review will examine the US industrial and manufacturing base to assess whether further national security tariffs are warranted.

When his political epitaph is written, will Trump be remembered as the US president who initiated a trade war, caused a global recession and destroyed the last vestiges of a waning international order crafted and policed by his thirteen post-World War 2 predecessors? Or are his threats to impose punitive tariffs a justifiable attempt to level the playing field of an unfair international trading system gamed by a mercantilist China? Read more