It’s all fun and games until Trump pulls the tariff card. Remember that while having a chuckle at the President’s scornful words aimed at Australia and its representatives.
Despite warnings that the rich and powerful should stop taunting Trump (because we are the ones who wear the consequences of their arrogance), this morning we woke up to find that the inevitable has happened.
Karoline Leavitt, the White House Press Secretary, has confirmed that there will be no exemptions to America’s 25 per cent steel and aluminium tariffs.
And more importantly, the President considered an exemption, and then considered against it.
Hmm… I wonder what could have possibly soured his good opinion of us?
What did Australian politicians do to sweeten the deal and bring the President around to a favourable outcome?
Effectively nothing.
Our politicians failed the country and no doubt they’ll be all over social media and the press pointing fingers and alluding to ‘Orange Man Bad’.
I said yesterday that there are three schools of thought when it comes to Trump.
The first is to antagonise him, reprimand him, and play the virtue card as Europe is doing from their high-towers. They are like the old kings, living in the throne room of a collapsing castle at the edge of the cliff, tilting toward the sea where the wind howls mournfully through all the missing rocks and cracked walls. They imagine their ghosts and grand history protects their power when everyone else can see what Trump sees … decline. Is Russia stealing bricks from the bottom of the ruin? Sure. But the political error is old enough to have turned to rot. Antagonising Trump leads to tariffs and question marks hanging over mission-critical defence pacts.
The second approach is to hide from Trump and hope he doesn’t notice Australia, or its trade agreements, exist. This is the philosophy of both major parties. Because they are led by fundamentally weak men, they behave like mice living in the master’s house, darting out at night to live off the scraps. They talk war while never expecting to wage war beyond nibbling at the battlefield behind other nations. Trump despises weakness as much as rudeness. The result of Albanese’s inability to negotiate trade is what we wake up to this morning – a disaster for steel and aluminium. The Labor Party are responsible for this, and the Liberals played a role by threatening to ‘lobby’ the President over Ukraine.
Political advisers are very stupid if they think that just because Trump didn’t immediately remember the acronym Aukus out of context and without warning, that he isn’t being kept informed about the manner in which Australia’s leadership, and former leadership, speak about him. As soon as he pulled out the tariff negotiation, he would have been surrounded by people whose job it is to know everything about what we do and what we say, and they would have brought all those nasty quotes up. Presented with the arrogance of our leaders, and their total lack of imagination in the business world, he would have stuck the tariff sticker on us and moved on.
The third way of interacting Trump is to propose business deals. Australia should have been proactive in offering investment opportunities, military collaborations, and partnerships. Talk strength. Offer creative options. Make promises on his favourite topics – like free speech – which are doubly beneficial to the Australian people.
Too many politicians see Trump as a ‘threat’ to their economies instead of a wild-card opportunity to elevate Australia’s fortunes. The man likes investment. He likes trade. That is why our largest mining companies are over there, prospecting.
What do we pay our politicians for? To sit around moping and crying with the European Union, who have done nothing but disadvantage us and play petty politics all day? To roleplay at being SES workers, carrying sandbags and nodding at the swell?
I would say, ‘Hop on a plane and be productive!’ but it’s doubtful Labor can boast a single minister from the private sector who knows how to speak the language of prosperity.
Someone who says we are ‘continuing to engage constructively’ with America, or ‘it’s in Australia’s interest, but it’s also in the economic interests of the United States for Australia to be exempted’ hasn’t got a clue how to handle America.
And I doubt a former policeman, who scoffs at digital liberty, will do much better.
Tossing random darts at Trump with a poor aim and weak arm has cost our country. We can thank the ABC for that. We can thank politicians for that. We can thank those holier-than-thou scribes in the pages of MSM for that.
It is not too late to do business with Trump, but it might be too late to find a politician capable of making a deal.