Trump is remaking the world order, but do Albanese and Dutton get it?

Trump’s appeals to American greatness are in one sense deeply conservative, but his program is fundamentally revolutionary, writes James Morrow.

A little good news for Anthony Albanese as Donald Trump lands haymakers on everyone from allied trading partners to his enemies in the Washington bureaucracy.

Australia is safe from disruption – for now.

Canberra is a reliable Five Eyes partner, Trump has expressed enthusiasm for AUKUS, Labor’s lousy treatment of Israel has not yet become a live issue in Washington, and the US runs a generous trade surplus with Australia.

Yet this won’t always be the case. Which is a problem, because it appears that neither the prime minister nor most of the Australian political class really gets what Trump is about.

Here, it is worth making a few points.

One, Donald Trump is on a mission to remake a global order which may have been authored by the United States out of the ashes of World War II and the Cold War but which has since stopped serving the interests of Americans.

His appeals to American greatness are in one sense deeply conservative, but his program is fundamentally revolutionary.

Supporters of US President-elect Donald Trump line up on the National Mall for a MAGA victory rally at Capital One Arena in Washington, DC. Picture: AFP

He is not an old school Republican but instead unites a new class of tech entrepreneurs with middle and working class voters against a globalist-oriented academic, corporate and bureaucratic aristocracy he believes has lived high for too long off everyone else’s effort.

Two, and this is perhaps difficult for some in Australia to appreciate, Trump is fundamentally right that this aristocracy had put America and the West on a glide path to oblivion.

Orthodoxies around free trade, climate, and borders that became a substitute religion for those who pray in the direction of Davos have nuked middle classes and manufacturing jobs.

Identity politics and DEI lunacy created a whole class of administrators in the worlds of government, corporations, and academia who did well clipping the ticket but whose only output was institutional rot.

Meanwhile revelations over the past 48 hours of how billions of dollars in supposed aid money had been turned into a slush fund for the US State Department and other bodies to promote opposition groups, anti-free speech agendas, DEI and gender theory programs, and a million other things besides feeding babies and digging wells seem to confirm the worst fears about the “deep state”.

A Mexico's Army officer patrols the Mexican side of the US-Mexico border in Playas de Tijuana, Baja California state, Mexico. PictureGuillermo Arias / AFP

On this front, it will bear watching whether or not US agencies had any input in pushing Australian internet “safety” and “misinformation” agendas as part of a broader effort to shape and control the information space.

Which brings us to the third point.

Australia does not really have an option to sit this one out, or hope that the usual pattern where the waves made by American politics take a few years to make it across the Pacific before cresting more gently on our shores.

The same forces that brought about the rise of Trump in the US are at play here.

Australia’s manufacturing sector is the smallest by GDP in the OECD, our migration is technically orderly but entirely out of control, climate policies have made our energy far too expensive, and social cohesion is a mess.

And our political system, often touted for its stability, means that change is very hard indeed.

At the same time, the US is poised for a new era of AI, tech and re-shored manufacturing growth based on cheap energy, threatening to leave us relative paupers.

It’s not clear that the prime minister gets any of this.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese visits the Australian Vanadium Electrolyte Manufacturing facility. Australian manufacturing is the lowest in the OECD as a share of the economy. Picture: NewsWire / Sharon Smith

In a recent podcast interview, Mr Albanese was asked about Trump’s campaign tactics and he went off on a riff about toxic masculinity.

The Albanese government has been at best diffident about the very idea of Australia, whether it be the Voice referendum (whose 60-40 defeat was a pressure release for everyday voters) or our High Commissioner to London ditching Australia Day festivities.

But neither does the opposition seem to have a grasp as to just how quickly the world has changed, given that the US is now led by a man who has extracted massive border concessions from Canada and Mexico and Panama not through months or years of tortured diplomacy but tit-for-tat tweets.

Opposition leader Peter Dutton gets what has been called the “vibe shift” away from globalism and elite anti-Australianism.

But while he is naturally reluctant to draw fire with an election in the offing, but with the Paris Accord on climate all but dead and the tide turning on gender ideology there is a huge opportunity to say what so many are thinking: Enough, this isn’t working for anyone.

The essential fact though is this.

No matter who wins the Australian election due in the next few months, Donald Trump will still be president of the United States, and positioning Australia for the move away from old institutions and towards new opportunities is vital.

Originally published as Trump is remaking the world order, but do Albanese and Dutton get it?