Will chaos in the White House provide a timely case for stability – or will the flurry of noise validate the libertarian right?
As Donald Trump raids the Fox News desk to staff his Addams Family of a second administration, we await with bated breath for how the latest season of his schlock horror show will impact local transmission.
Trump is already back to form abandoning norms in the name of a heroic but inconsistent interpretation of US freedom and it is within these contradictions that both opportunity and risk loom large for client states like Australia.
There are two immediate purchase points that could either galvanise or undermine the Albanese government; on trade Trump wants to wind back globalisation, on technology he seeks the opposite.
We know from pre-election polling that Trump’s peculiar breed of chutzpah and nihilism speaks to many Australian men, while his long list of grievances about the global economic order that the US imposed on the world also resonates here.
Before even taking power, Trump has flagged punitive tariffs on Mexico and Canada (alongside China), unwinding Bill Clinton’s Nafta, a treaty that traded cheaper imports at the expense of the “rust belt” industrial states that have now twice delivered power to Trump.
Like the Democrats, Australian Labor remains strongly tied to the free trade agenda – the original wave of deregulation occurring with the willing facilitation of the Hawke-Keating governments. Ignore for a moment that John Howard took things even further, the Coalition is working hard to replicate the Republican working-class pivot without upsetting its corporate masters.
While Australia is in no position to either match or mimic Trump’s tariffs and will instead hope we are simply ignored, a homegrown contest of ideas is emerging suggesting a more interventionist approach to local industry.
Among the multitude of bills that passed the parliament last week was the Future Made in Australia policy to support onshore industries via generous tax credits. While the policy detail is technocratic, the real-world impact would be transformative – local manufacturing of wind turbines, onshore processing of green iron and hydrogen, tying the energy transition to an industrial renaissance.
This policy, backed by a more focused Future Fund and, by extension, Australia’s massive pool of worker capital would give the ALP the foundations of a populist, progressive Australia First economic agenda. This week’s Guardian Essential Report suggests this would be singing to the choir.
Despite the extremely broad support for these measures, including winding back free trade deals, the Coalition has locked itself into opposing these measures before the discussion has begun, a clear opening for Labor to, eh, trump it on economic sovereignty.
While the Albanese government may be able to harness some Maga vibes when it comes to the economy it could be directly in the line of fire when it comes to accelerating efforts to regulate technology.
The incoming vice-president, JD Vance, who has been literally sponsored into public office by the libertarian tech overlords Peter Thiel and Marc Andreessen, has vowed to withdraw military support for countries that attempt to regulate the internet on the grounds of restraint of free speech.
The same “freedom of speech” trope has been the talisman deployed by local conservatives and their media boosters to see off attempts to require the major platforms to address dangerous and malicious disinformation.
Meanwhile, first bro Elon Musk has also taken potshots at our eSafety commissioner for having the temerity to seek the removal of violent material from the cesspit of his social media platform.
And Silicon Valley is unlikely to take kindly to Australia’s social media ban on children, nor the attempt to place a general duty of care on platforms or the move for a bespoke children’s privacy code.
NewsCorp is pushing for even more assertive tech independence, its Australian executive chair advocating for a licensing regime that would require platforms to fund news, pay tax and comply with local law.
These initiatives are all welcomed by Australian voters as assertion of our national right to set lines in the sand when it comes to the world’s most powerful tech companies.
There will be considerable political upside in holding the line on tech sovereignty even at the risk of angry blowback from Trump acolytes. How Murdoch’s minions play this showdown would be worth the price of the popcorn.
More broadly, how these dual but interwoven battles surrounding trade and tech nationalism play out over the coming months will set the tone, if not the substance, of our upcoming election.
Will the chaos Trump inevitably brings to office provide a timely case for stability, or will the flurry of noise validate the libertarian right trashing action on climate and other government interventions?
If the tariff play succeeds in tanking the global economy, will it provide Labor with an economic leave pass should interest rates remain at current levels or deepen the case that change is needed?
And, critically, will the right’s confusing, confounding and often contradictory constructions of “freedom” resonate with an Australian electorate, for whom the concept is not the burning platform some portray it as?
This final set of findings suggests Australia is not yet America, although the cultural, political and social excesses that are condemning that nation to decline continue to knock on our door.
The challenge for incumbent governments will be to understand the drivers of Trumpism without succumbing to them.
Anchoring a national discussion around the ideas of economic independence and the freedom to create sovereign online spaces would both harness and differentiate from the forces Trump has marshalled so effectively.
Like any horror movie, the trick is to remember it’s all make-believe and to know when to look away.
Written by Peter Lewis, originally published in The Guardian Australia, 3 Dec 2024