AUKUS is really a dream for the US. Trump's big thing is the US has carried (and paid for) allies Defence in Europe and Pacific since WW2 and it's time for the US taxpayer gravy boat to stop. I can see the logic. So AUKUS, where US Allies are stumping up huge amounts of money for equipment, and spending a lot of that in the US, and are tied into US technologies, plus staffing with their natives so near zero cost to the US taxpayer is a dream come true. So surely the more the merrier. It's kind of like a US version of Wagner, a self-funding military whose strings you can pull.