Madeleine King joins Anthony Albanese’s Washington trip amid critical minerals focus for Donald Trump meeting

Anthony Albanese’s first formal meeting with Donald Trump is expected to have a strong focus on critical minerals, as the Prime Minister’s cabinet colleagues play down the likelihood of a testy interaction.

Mr Albanese flies out to Washington on Sunday afternoon for the long-anticipated White House meeting.

Resources Minister Madeleine King and Industry Minister Tim Ayres will travel with the Prime Minister.

Cabinet colleague Jason Clare said on Sunday that the world wanted critical minerals and Australia had them to offer.

“We want to work with like-minded countries around the world to help to extract them and refine them and process them… We want to work closely with the US on this,” he said.

Australia has been working on a critical minerals deal with the US for years.

However, the Trump administration’s urgency over the need to secure diverse supply chains was crystallised a week ago when China put export controls on nearly all the minerals vital to everything from mobile phones and electric cars to night vision goggles and military weapons.

It’s expected that Australia will offer the US priority access to buying critical minerals from projects here.

Mr Clare said he was “very confident” the meeting between the leaders overnight on Monday, Australian time, would go well.

“Different presidents and prime ministers of different political parties have worked together over a long, long period of time. I don’t think this will be any different,” he said.

Asked whether it would be a negative or a positive for the PM if Mr Trump took a crack at him, given many Australians don’t like the President, the minister said, “I doubt that’s a problem.”

He thought the conversation between leaders would be driven by the common values and interests between their countries.

Cabinet colleague Tony Burke said ministers had built up strong working relationships with their counterparts in the Trump administration.

“Certainly, for myself with Home Affairs, working with the secretary for Homeland Security, Kristi Noem and working with the director of the FBI Kash Patel, the engagement government-to-government has been really strong, really strong,” he said.

“That sort of engagement, I think, we’ve been seeing across government, and that … marks the foundation for the meeting.”

Mr Albanese has spoken with Mr Trump four times via phone, and they had a brief meeting at a function on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York last month.