Next US president is the Donald, stupid

WE know people in Canberra can be slow learners, but really, the US election was more than a month ago and in five weeks Trump will become president for at least four years, writes Terry McCrann.

WE know that people in Canberra can be slow learners, but really — the US election was more than a month ago and in five weeks Donald Trump will become president for at least four years and on the evidence of the last quarter century in all probability for eight years.

The only one of the past five presidents who didn’t win re-election and thus get to serve the full eight years is extremely instructive. That’s, instructive for a prime minister and a treasurer in Australia in 2017 — rendered extremely instructive by the US election result.

It was George Bush the elder. In his 1988 campaign he issued those immortal words: “Read my lips, no new taxes.” When he signed off on higher taxes, he sealed his fate and as a consequence in 1992 the US got president Bill Clinton and last month almost got President Hillary as well.

Time magazine dubbed those six words from president Bush as the third most “unfortunate” political one-liner of all time. That ranked behind Clinton’s “I did not have sex with that woman” and numero uno, Richard Nixon’s ”I am not a crook.”

So, what was required from around 3pm back on November 9, by policy makers and advisers right around the world, and for us more narrowly, in Canberra, was a 180-degree pivot to game plan eight years of living in a world made by President Trump rather than the generally expected (in Canberra, 100 per cent expected) President Clinton.

There’s been precious little evidence of the slightest understanding in Canberra of that at either the political or advisory levels.

What have been the two major policy initiatives rushed out by the government since the election?

US president-elect Donald Trump is going to be a pro-fossil fuel president.

One was the ‘deal’ to settle the asylum seekers on Nauru and Manus Islands in the US; a deal made with the current Obama administration. The second was to rush out the signing of our ‘climate change’ commitments from the Paris Accord.

In a narrow sense the timing of both was understandable and even unavoidable — the asylum seekers deal had been in negotiation for weeks and either had to be agreed or abandoned; foreign minister Julie Bishop and energy/environment minister Josh Frydenberg, were about to go on the road to the next climate conference in Marrakech.

In a narrow — collective heads-in-the-sand Canberran — sense, that is.

For what was and remains the absolute number one core policy promise of Trump? To build the wall to stop illegal immigration into the US. And here was our PM daring him to take our illegal immigrants into the US; made worse by the reality that it will only happen — if at all — on his watch.

Similarly with the climate commitments. Candidate Trump promised to tear up the Paris accord. While president-elect Trump has walked back a little from that, there is no doubt that he is going to be sensibly, a pro-fossil fuel president.

The substantive point of my highlighting these inanities is not that PM Malcolm Turnbull might have damaged his — and indeed Australia’s — prospects of ‘connecting’ with president Trump.

I doubt that president Trump would frankly care — look at how he’s broken bread with far more virulent and significant critics like opponent Mitt Romney, while equally abandoning close supporters like Rudy Giuliani. Turnbull, Turnbull? Is he that guy from Austria?

No, my substantive point is what it says about our dullards, in Canberra — both the politicians and the advisers.

IT suggests they seem to think that we are going through a temporary aberration: that in a couple of months we will return to the world ex ante the election (or as it would have also been post-election if Clinton had won).

Bill Clinton was elected after George Bush Snr went back on a tax promise.

That’s the world of (pointless) climate conference showboating, international agencies, and ‘normal’ diplomacy. Etc. Etc.

No, it’s not a temporary aberration; we are not going to snap back to the world as it was under president Obama.

The guys, non-gender or indeed intelligence specific, in Canberra should have snapped into action at 3pm on November 9. What’s going to be different? What challenges and opportunities does it present for us?

There are dozens, let me nominate three.

The first is the big one — a changed relationship between the US and China; each in their own way the most significant two countries in our future, and collectively, overwhelmingly dominant over all other.

Instead of tut-tutting over Trump’s diplomatic gaucherie in talking to the president of Taiwan — actually, a classic Trumpean negotiating masterstroke — think about mapping out exactly how that interface is going to develop and where we need to position ourselves.

Think about not simply as us being the ‘meat, potentially, in a merde sandwich,’ but the way that interface is going to shape the global economic, financial and political dynamics. If it’s going to hurt: how we defend; if it’s going to open doors; how we push through them.

Second point: Trump has made many overblown and indeed conflicting promises. But his election has instantly changed both the world we live in and the dynamics of global policy competitiveness.

Donald Trump’s election made certain the official rate rise Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen is set to deliver.

Take company tax. We are at 30 per cent and in a ‘bold’ (hint: sarcasm quotes) move are aiming to get it down to 25 per cent in 10 years.

Right now the US is the only major economic power — and, not exactly incidentally, the funnel for global capital flows — above us, at 35 per cent. Trump wants to go to 15 per cent.

KNOCK, knock, does anyone in Canberra understand that we are on the edge of becoming the most unattractive destination for investment capital in the entire world?

And again, not exactly incidentally, that we are a country with over $1 trillion of net foreign debt and having to attract $80 billion a year of new foreign money every year? The big thing that a PM who actually understood what had just happened on November 8 — in the US, November 9 down under — would have done, at 3pm on that day, would have been to announce all (especially budget) bets were off.

We were suddenly in a new — extremely challenging and competitive — but also brimming with opportunity — world.

Final change: counterintuitively to almost all those so-called experts, the Trump win actually made certain the official rate rise that Fed head Janet Yellen is going to deliver early tomorrow morning.

This speaks to a bigger point: all those economic and financial forecasts pre-election were all rendered obsolete in a shock instant.

Would someone mind waking both the PM and the treasurer, Scott Morrison and tell them?

And those six words of Bush? There’s not only an economic policy imperative to cut taxes, but a political one as well. No need to read lips, Malcolm and Scott, just learn some history.

Originally published as Next US president is the Donald, stupid