Donald Trump’s lunatic tariff attack leaves no excuses for Australian supporters | David Penberthy

There can no longer be any rational basis for any Australian admiring what this bloke represents, writes David Penberthy.

Here’s a blunt and simple message for the remaining Trump lovers who still exist in Australia.

If you’re still barracking for Donald Trump, you’re barracking against Australia.

Let’s put it another way.

If you consider yourself a patriotic Australian, but are still barracking for Trump, logic suggests that you do not love Australia.

Setting aside the oddness of why someone here would show so much love and loyalty towards the leader of another country, there can no longer be any rational basis for any Australian admiring what this bloke represents.

The appeal of Trumpism is manifold. There are many elements which draw people in.

The rejection of woke nonsense, the idea that female athletes shouldn’t have to compete against people who until recently were men, the valid belief that countries should be free to protect their borders from disorderly migration, a yearning for stronger action from the courts against criminals.

Put me down for all of the above.

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But when it comes to declaring economic war on every country on earth – including countries like ours which have shown nothing other than loyalty – surely that’s where we part company, right?

The most striking feature of the press conference Trump held early Thursday was the language he used.

Words such as raped, pillaged, scavenged and plundered. The assertion that America has somehow been ripped off, brutalised, subject to vicious attacks.

Seeing Australia being lumped in with the so-called rapists, scavengers and plunderers, to use Trump’s vile and florid language, is nothing short of a disgrace.

Is this the way you treat a friend?

US President Donald Trump bragging about attacking America’s closest friends and rivals alike. Picture: Brendan Smialowski/AFP

A friend which stood by you and sacrificed thousands of lives in every conflict since World War One, including the really stupid ones, such as the unwinnable war in Vietnam or the war against Iraq over its non-existent weapons of mass destruction?

Forget the fact that the unilateral 10 per cent tariff which will hit Australia is at the lower end of the spectrum of those much higher tariff measures Trump announced Thursday. None of that is a feather in Trump’s cap.

Any level of tariff against Australia is demonstrably ridiculous given that Australia has a huge trade imbalance with the United States anyway.

That’s to say, we import much, much more from America than America imports from us. It is all upside for them, but now, our farmers, winemakers, steelmakers, everyone who makes and sells anything into America is going to be hit by a tax which imperils billions of dollars worth of Australian exports.

The great stupidity of it all is that free trade has been the key driver of growing global affluence over the past 50 years.

Opposition leader Peter Dutton and Liberal candidate for Boothby Nicolle Flint at SAGE at Tonsley. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Ben Clark

You hear Australian Trump lovers get misty-eyed about the so-called demise of Australian manufacturing. It’s nonsense.

Australian manufacturing hasn’t undergone a demise. It’s undergone a transformation.

Look at South Australia.

There are now more people working at the Tonsley precinct in a whole range of more sophisticated manufacturing industries than there ever were during the supposedly heady days of Chrysler and Mitsubishi.

And look also at the change in living standards in Australia since the so-called golden era of heavy manufacturing, when under Thomas Playford we made everything from fridges and ovens to clothing, footwear and textiles, right here at home.

As economies diversify the general level of affluence increases.

Australia is more affluent now that it has ever been and there are so many jobs going that we are unable to fill all of them with our existing domestic population.

Look at China and Vietnam and Indonesia over the past 30 years.

The greatest economic story in the Asian region has involved the expansion of the middle class as these nations, even communist nations, start embracing trade.

And the expansion of the middle class should not be misread as the accumulation of wealth by the few.

It is the opposite, the accumulation of wealth by more people who formerly were working class.

I suppose if you live in Sioux City, Iowa, and have always dreamed of a world where your child too could make shoes in a Bangladeshi-style sweatshop for a sportswear company, Trump’s war on globalisation couldn’t have come a moment too soon.

The rest of the world is marvelling at the stupidity of it all.

\Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on the campaign trail In Victoria. Picture: Jason Edwards / NewsWire

And as is the case in Canada, where the left-wing Liberal Party is now off the mat thanks to Trump’s lunatic belligerence against their innocent nation, the purportedly right-wing Trump is helping the electoral fortunes of another left-wing government right here in Australia.

For its multiple policy failures, one of the few achievements of the Albanese government this term was to restore the trade relationship with China after its suffered through Scott Morrison’s megaphone diplomacy over Covid.

This undeserved attack by our major ally on Australia gives Mr Albanese a chance to look level-headed and mature and reasonable.

His quiet defence of Australian jobs and businesses will resonate with non-committed voters who share his dismay at the fact that Australia is being targeted at all.

And while Peter Dutton is not Donald Trump, he’s ideologically more like Trump than Albo, which is an unfortunate bit of timing when most normal people have now reached the unshakeable conclusion that Donald Trump is officially as mad as a march hare.

The bigger issue of course is that uncertainty and chaos favours incumbent governments, as was the case with John Howard after September 11, with voters becoming adverse to change during uncertain times.

And the allusion to 2001 is a valid one, because in economic terms, this is as big an attack on the heart of capitalism as 9/11 was, ushering in an era of unpredictability on a global scale, all thanks to a bloke who can’t tell the difference between his friends and his enemies.

Originally published as Donald Trump’s lunatic tariff attack leaves no excuses for Australian supporters | David Penberthy