  The effects of possible explicit violation of the Peccei-Quinn symmetry
responsible for the solution of the strong CP problem are studied in
supersymmetric models. It is shown that automatic models with an abelian $U(1)$
gauge symmetry are easy to construct both in the context of fundamental and
composite models of axions. It is argued that it is preferable to use abelian
rather than nonabelian gauge groups in order to obtains automatic symmetries. A
composite model with no exact $R$ symmetry is studied and it is found that,
unlike common belief, supersymmetry is broken.
