Hugh White, a professor at the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre at Australian National University in Canberra, said the allies were facing the “biggest disagreement over fundamental strategic perceptions and objectives” in the history of their alliance, in which each member is committed to recognising an attack on the other in the Pacific as a threat to its own peace and security.

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“Over the past two years, while Canberra has talked up the alliance as ‘100 years of mateship’, a wide and growing gap has developed between Washington and Canberra over China,” White said.

Australia is a member of the “Five Eyes” intelligence alliance along with the US, Canada, Britain and New Zealand, and has fought alongside the US in every one of its major conflicts since World War I. Under a 2011 deal reached by former president Barack Obama, 2,500 US Marines are stationed in Darwin to boost Washington’s presence in the Pacific.

Last year, Australia passed foreign interference laws amid anxiety about Chinese influence and became the first country to ban Huawei from its 5G network on national security concerns.

Trump and Morrison are expected to have wide-ranging discussions on cooperation, including a plan to improve access to rare earths used in weapons systems and consumer electronics – more than 80 per cent of which are currently supplied by China.

Nonetheless, Canberra has criticised Trump’s escalating trade war with China, which takes almost one-third of Australian exports.

While sympathising with US complaints about intellectual property protection and trade rules, Morrision has lamented the “collateral damage” from the spiralling trade spat, which has seen Washington impose tariffs on US$360 billion worth of Chinese goods and Beijing slap tariffs on US$110 billion of US goods in return.

Although Australia has weathered the trade war better than many other economies on the back of persistently strong exports to China, its stock market and tourism industry – which saw a double-digit rise in Chinese visitors in 2017-18 flatline to 0.3 per cent growth in 2018-19, according to Tourism Australia figures – have already taken a hit.

Canberra has also declined to join Washington in conducting “freedom of navigation” operations to challenge Chinese claims to contested territory in the South China Sea – despite echoing US rhetoric on the need for a “free and open” Indo-Pacific – and avoided following Washington’s lead in labelling Beijing a “strategic competitor” and “rival power”.

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Brendan Thomas-Noone, a research fellow at the United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney, said there was a growing feeling in Washington that trade was linked directly to geostrategic issues such as China’s military modernisation, which threatens to usurp US dominance in the region.

“On a lot of issues regarding China’s actions in the Indo-Pacific, Australia has been ahead of the US – foreign interference and 5G are the obvious examples – but trade goes to the heart of Australia’s balance between the US and China,” said Thomas-Noone. “Morrison has attempted to tread a fine line, making the case that there are some legitimate grievances the US has with China’s economic policies. However I don’t think he will be willing to go much further while in the US.”

Earlier this month, US Ambassador to Australia Arthur B Culvahouse Jnr said Canberra should take on a “greater power role in the region” by conducting freedom of navigation exercises in the South China Sea and point out what he called “malign” actions by Beijing. Speaking at a dinner hosted by the Institute for Regional Security in Canberra on September 12, he described these actions as debt trap diplomacy and intellectual property infringement.

“The US has more confidence in Australia than Australia has in itself,” Culvahouse Jnr said, according to a report in the Australian Financial Review.

The speech came just days before a Reuters report, which quoted sources saying Canberra had concluded that Beijing was responsible for a cyberattack on the Australian parliament in February, but decided against publicly protesting it for fear of disrupting trade relations with China.

In August, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told an event hosted by the Sydney-based Centre for Independent Studies that Australia should not compromise its national security in an attempt to maintain trade relations with China, after a question from the audience highlighted economic relations as a reason to avoid confrontation with Beijing.

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“Some US officials will state privately that Australia is a great ally of the US all around the world, except in Asia,” said James Curran, a professor at the University of Sydney who specialises in US-Australia relations.

“The US ambassador to Australia has recently asked for Australia to show ‘backbone” on freedom of navigation operations in the South China Sea. And he has done it in the most condescending kind of way, asserting that Australia needs to discover a new sense of confidence and maturity.”

Ahead of his departure to the US, Morrison on Thursday told parliament that the US could count on Australia as a partner that “pulls their weight in the alliance”.

“In a complex world, in a complicated world, a world of strategic competition, a world of great uncertainties – our partners and our allies are of great importance,” the prime minister said ahead of the trip, which on September 22 will also see him join Trump on a visit to a paper recycling mill in Ohio owned by Australian billionaire Anthony Pratt.

Jian Zhang, an associate professor at the Australian Defence Force Academy, said in his discussions with Trump, Morrison would seek to walk a fine line between reaffirming their common security interests and broaching concerns over trade.

“As a result of the visit, Australia will make it clear to the US that Australia has a firm and solid commitment to the alliance and especially a willingness to seek closer security cooperation,” said Zhang. “But on the other hand, I do think Morrison will express Australia’s negative view of the impact of the trade war. But what will eventually be announced in public is hard to say.”

Chen Hong, director of the Australian Studies Centre at the East China Normal University in Shanghai, said Beijing would expect Canberra to resist the calls of “panda bashers” to follow Washington’s path of economic confrontation with China.

“If Australia imprudently follows Washington’s directives to decouple from China, it would only boomerang to wreak havoc on the Australian economy. Australian politicians with the slightest sensibility won’t opt to do so, hopefully,” said Chen, adding that US influence in Asia was expected to decline.

“China does not press for Australia to choose between itself and America, but Australia will naturally make decisions to serve its own national interest. We believe Australia will develop and adopt a more independent policy in dealing with international issues instead of blindly following the US as its deputy sheriff.”

But while Morrison is likely to resist US pressure to choose a side between Washington and Beijing, White at the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre said Canberra’s balancing act would only become harder to maintain in the future.

“At the moment we want America to remain the region’s primary power, but we are not willing to risk our relations with China to support it,” White said. “Is that just craven timidity, as some of the Government’s own backbenchers seem to suspect? Or has the Government quietly concluded that – with or without our support – Washington is going to lose the contest to China, and has decided that we had better keep out of it? Maybe a bit of both.”