President-elect Joe Biden has started the task of uniting a divided USA. But his biggest problem in the short-term is to unite his own party and how he does that will have considerable impact on Australia.
Normally when a president or prime minister is elected there is euphoria in the party and a period of rejoicing that leads to a honeymoon. Not so after the 2020 Democratic Party presidential win. The Democrats had expected to sweep the nation but instead they are unlikely to hold the Senate and they lost House of Representative seats.
The right wing of the party — the “conservatives” — blame the leftist policies for the loss of House of Representative seats and are pushing hard for them to be watered down.
The leftists, who call themselves “progressives” say their policies were not the problem but blame lack of sufficient work by individual candidates and the party machine. Both wings of the party have been stunned at the white vote for Donald Trump and Trump’s strong showing among black and Latin Americans.
The conservatives say the Black Lives Matter campaign backed by progressives entrenched white voters in the Trump camp and made the black middle class people nervous about violence, meaning many also voted for Trump.
The Democrats’ conservatives want Biden to basically revert to Obama policies which promote globalisation and free trade. They see trade agreements as essential for American peace and prosperity.
The progressives say these policies have cost American jobs and antagonised labour unions. They blame trade deals for hurting American workers in favour of corporate interests.
Accordingly, they want Biden to be pro-American jobs. And there are similar divisions on carbon reduction issues. In a normal election, Trump and the Republicans would have seized on these divisions and widened them, but the dominance of COVID-19 and the personality of Donald Trump became dominant issues.
China focus
When it comes to China, Biden looks like he will continue the tough Trump line.
His remarks in the October 22 debate were significant:
“We need to be having the rest of our friends with us, saying to China, ‘These are the rules. You play by them or you’re going to pay the price for not both these forces playing by them, economically. That’s the way I will run that it.”
US “friends” include Australia and Biden has indicated to our Prime Minister that he looks to come to Australia with his wife Dr Jill Biden. Right now China is beating up Australian exporters partly because of our remarks about China and partly because China is required to buy rural products from the US. But overriding both these forces is a much more hostile China and that hostility increases the risk of military confrontation. We will not want such a confrontation partly because, given America’s bad military hardware choices in recent years, the US might lose any confrontation and withdraw from the region.
Meanwhile Australia either goes its own way or requires China to obey the US-stipulated “rules”.
The Biden-Morrison meeting will be important in setting out the rules that the US wants Australia to follow in our relationship with China.
At this stage it is not clear whether the new president will retain the $US360bn of tariffs on Chinese goods. And he has not set out a policy that clearly states whether he will proceed with the bans on Chinese social media sites like TikTock and WeChat
Common ground
In essence Biden and the Democrats have yet to decide whether a clash between the two leading powers is unavoidable or whether they can work together on issues where there is common ground such as climate change
During the campaign Biden announced extensive plans to expand “Buy America” programs and proposed tax penalties for companies that send jobs overseas. We will be seeking a special relationship and status for goods made in Australia but that will not be easy to achieve.
On the environment, Biden’s vice-presidential selection Kamala Harris is in the progressive camp and has considerable doubts about the Obama era of trade deals.
She was one of the few Senate Democrats to vote against the revised NAFTA agreement because it did not contain provisions on climate change.
Biden has also done more than any previous Democratic President to attract the “progressive” wing of his party agreeing to give unions and environmentalists an increased role in writing future trade rules.
Given the fundamental differences in the party, Biden, as an experienced politician, is likely to first concentrate on domestic priorities like curbing the COVID-19 pandemic, addressing climate change and investing in infrastructure and health care.
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