Anti-Trump protests to target AUSMIN

Protest groups infuriated by US President Donald Trump will target the Australia-US Ministerial meetings on California's Stanford University campus involving Australian Foreign Affairs Minister Julie Bishop and Defence Minister Marise Payne.

The ministers will meet with Mr Trump's top cabinet members, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Defense Secretary James Mattis, for AUSMIN at the university's Hoover Institution on Monday and Tuesday where China's expansion in the South-Pacific, North Korea, trade and Russia will be items on the agenda.

The San Francisco Bay Area is an anti-Trump hotbed.

The region overwhelmingly voted against Mr Trump in the 2016 presidential election, with rival Hillary Clinton receiving more than 70 per cent of the vote.

Mr Trump has not ventured to the Democrat Party stronghold since moving into the White House.

"This is a rare opportunity for us to tell Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Secretary of Defense James Mattis how we feel about Trump's disastrous, clueless, dangerous, inconsistent and exasperating foreign policy," Steve Rapport, an organiser working with Indivisible San Francisco and MoveOn, told AAP.

"By enabling Trump's inexplicable coziness with (Russian President Vladimir) Putin, Secretaries Pompeo and Mattis are complicit in advancing the Kremlin's interests over America's.

"It's past time for them to put the US and its allies first and restore sanity to our foreign policy."

The US State Department, Stanford campus police and Palo Alto police have devised a security plan to protect the delegations.

"For security reasons, we are not releasing security measures for the visit and any possible protests," Stanford Public Safety Department spokesman Bill Larson said.

"However, if there are protesters, they will be directed to assemble in an area near the venue."

The US selected Stanford for this year's AUSMIN to honour the 1951 signing of the ANZUS treaty in nearby San Francisco.

But concern is growing Mr Trump could be willing to walk away from allies in longstanding pacts like NATO and ANZUS.

Mr Trump's recent European and British tour, culminating with a private meeting and controversial press conference with Mr Putin, shook some American allies.

Mr Trump, in a media interview last week, raised doubt the US would support NATO member Montenegro if it was threatened.

Ms Bishop is expected to urge the Trump administration to hold Russia accountable for the downing of the Malaysian Airlines flight over Ukraine that killed 38 Australians, the annexation of Crimea, cyber meddling and the alleged role in nerve agent attacks in the UK.

At last year's AUSMIN Rex Tillerson was secretary of state, but his ouster resulted in former CIA director and China hawk Mr Pompeo's arrival.

Mr Pompeo upset China last year when he named it a bigger threat to the US than Russia and Iran.

China's military island building in the South China Sea and pursuit of investment opportunities with South Pacific nations is expected to be discussed at AUSMIN.

"We'll be discussing China, where, of course, we are seeking to advance a very pragmatic but principled relationship with China that takes into account their helpfulness on certain core international issues, including the DPRK (North Korea), while still holding Beijing to account for violations of international law and norms when that occurs," a senior State Department official told reporters last week.