If the US govt goes after Australia's Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme in early April, as the current timetable suggests, it will impact the country's May federal election.
PBS touches everyone, delivering affordable medicines across a vast array of common illnesses and conditions and some not so common. Australia's conservative Coalition parties will scramble to defend the move and may even give up, having made use of the PBS themselves in the past to campaign on.
In such a super-charged political environment, the one group that will not escape attack from nearly all sectors is the Trump administration itself. If the US does go after the PBS, it will bring Australia into the trade wars, seething. Nothing will be safe or off limits. Tariffs, trade, treaties, AUKUS. This little marsupial mouse will roar.