By Denis Bright

The return of another intensified round of Make America Great Again (MAGA) politics has real implications for the national sovereignty of Middle Powers like Australia and a few dozen developed countries in this broad category.

Humanity has survived spikes in MAGA Politics at intermittent intervals since the end of the US Civil War (1861-65). The second coming of Donald Trump is just another episode in this long saga.

Donald Trump has a nostalgia for President William McKinley (1896-1901). It was McKinley who pioneered hikes both US tariffs and another imperial outreach to incorporate remnants of the Spanish Empire in the traditions of earlier conflicts with the Mexican Republic.

Writing about another spike in MAGA influence generations later under President G W Bush (2001-08), American writer Gore Vidal (1925-2012), traced the growth of the rise of the US to global superpower status (Block Quote from Amazon Books 2002):

The United States has been engaged in what the great historian Charles A. Beard called “perpetual war for perpetual peace.” The Federation of American Scientists has catalogued nearly 200 military incursions since 1945 in which the United States has been the aggressor. In a series of penetrating and alarming essays, whose centrepiece is a commentary on the events of September 11, 2001 (deemed too controversial to publish in this country until now) Gore Vidal challenges the comforting consensus following September 11th and goes back and draws connections to Timothy McVeigh’s bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City. He asks were these simply the acts of “evil doers?”

 

MAGA and Manifest Destiny from a Republican Perspective in 1900 (Showing Theodore Roosevelt as Vice-President to William McKinley)

The excesses of the contemporary MAGA tariffs have been summarised by Callum Jones for The Guardian (27 November 2024):

The president-elect announced on Monday night that intended to hit Canada, Mexico and China with tariffs on all their exports to the US– until they reduce migration and the flow of drugs into the country.

While he threatened universal tariffs while campaigning for the White House, this proposal – a 25% duty on all goods from Mexico and Canada, and a 10% duty on China, on top of existing duties – is more targeted.

“Trump’s statements clearly herald the dawn of a new era of US trade protectionism that will sweep many US trading partners into its ambit,” said Eswar Prasad, former head of the IMF’s China division. “Such tariffs will have a disruptive effect on US as well as international trade, as countries around the world jockey to soften the blow of US tariffs on their own economies and try to find ways to evade the tariffs.”

MAGA aggrandizement under McKinley intensified rivalries in Europe and domestic market corrections during the recessions of the 1890s. The high tariffs imposed by the McKinley Tariff Act sparked retaliatory measures from other countries, leading to a decline in global trade. As trade flows diminished, economies became more isolated, hindering economic growth and exacerbating the market corrections as in the Depression of 1893.

Contrary to claims from MAGA apologists, the Biden years offered a reasonable degree of annual economic growth as well as stability for the value of the US dollar. These positive trends were associated with recovery from the COVID-crisis within the US and in the wider global economy. The Biden administration’s increases in official interest rates through the US Federal Reserve Bank added to investment flows into the domestic economy and contributed to the full recovery of the US economy from the GFC.

Net Capital Flows into the USA

With the second coming of Donald Trump, the US Fed Reserve Bank can lower interest rates again. Inflation peaked at 9.1 percent in the US in June 2022.and is now back into the acceptable 2-2.5 percent range. MAGA economics will use tariffs to increase the value of the US dollar. Economic problems can be exported to friend and foe alike to magnify the effects of increased tariffs.

The Albanese Government has a spring in its steps in anticipation of these problems. With Labor just ahead in polling, the Labor Government must be tempted to opt for an early election in February 2025.

Labor’s preferred advertising agencies could choose to run a Queensland style campaign against the federal LNP with an integrating theme of what style of leadership is required for difficult times. The shadow of Donald Trump’s new administration will intensify this insecurity. The lead up to the Australian elections will incorporate the US Inauguration Day on 20 January 2025 if the Governor-General dissolves the scheduled parliamentary session in mid-January.

Sky News does not share this optimism for the possibility of a second term for the Albanese Government (Sky News 27 November 2024 with Gary Hardgrave). Legislative negotiations between the Albanese Government and both the LNP and the Greens do suggest the Labor has some prospect of achieving a second term in office. This seemed to be impossible a few weeks ago. Election analyst John Black anticipated this possibility (Phillip Coorey in the AFR 29 November 2024):

Some 31 bills went through the Senate on Thursday night, making it a total of 45 for the week. Of the 31 bills, 27, including the RBA restructure, the Future Made in Australia Act, the mergers and acquisitions overhaul, a food and grocery code of conduct, extending the credit code to buy now, pay later operators, and the Build to Rent housing bill, were done with the support of the Greens and Senate crossbenchers Jacqui Lambie and David Pocock.

Four others – the social media age ban and a package of tough migration bills allowing the government to pay other countries to take non-citizens who refuse to leave or are impossible to repatriate – passed with the support of the Coalition.

Prime Minister Albanese has kept his government’s options open about the likely election date. There is that window of opportunity to announce an election in mid-January 2025 to clear the decks before the WA state poll on 5 March 2025. Peter Dutton might assist with a stumble about the LNP’s adulation of any US Administration at the expense of Australian living standards and national sovereignty.

My dissenting opinion from the interpretations offered by Sky News must of course be qualified by the unknowns of Labor’s campaigning style and the timing for that big event. As in the 1993 Australian elections, the federal LNP was always the certain favourite. The final result ended in a net loss of four seats by John Hewson with gains and losses for both sides of politics because of the currents of uncertainty across Australia after the worst recession since the 1930s.

Labor’s appeals in some marginal seats are now a but rusty as the LNP has perfected its own campaigning outreach to heartland seats. It also shows up in high levels of informal votes, failure to enroll and a widespread alienation from formal politics as agendas for change.

This is what I like to call The Rappville Factor in Australian politics after a lovely hamlet in the marginal electorate of Page with its eighty-eight formal votes at the Rappville Public School. The number of informal votes equalled the Labor vote of eleven. Here the swing to the National Party of 10.65 percent in 2022 was carried in preference allocations from minor far-right parties and a popular independent candidate.

Rappville has been through the wars of bushfires and floods. The community will face the effects of MAGA juggernaut in 2025 as its affects our returns on superannuation funds and mortgage repayments.

Perhaps the spirit of the Late Jack Lang will be out and about on the campaign trail to revive Labor fortunes. I certainly intend to give Rappville a visit to share in the local hospitality at the hotel restaurant by the rail tracks between Casino and Grafton where the XPT no longer stops.

Rappville: Defiant After the Great Flood and Now the Global MAGA Juggernaut?