EDITORIAL: American election looms as trade game changer

In just a few days, we will finally have an answer to the question that has consumed the world for the past year: who will be the next US president?

There’s a strong possibility the answer to that question will be Donald Trump.

While Kamala Harris has a narrow lead in the popular vote according to polls, a number of models have Republican candidate Trump on track to prevail in the all-important Electoral College.

It’s tempting for us in Australia to view American politics — and particularly this election — as pure entertainment.

It’s got all the hallmarks of a big Netflix thriller: larger-than-life characters, incredible mid-season plot twists and plenty of stunts. Trump cosplaying as a garbage man in a rubbish truck, for example. Assassination attempts for another.

But there is of course a deeply serious side to the colour and spectacle of the carnival of weird that is the US’s peculiar brand of democracy.

The impact of a change in administration would be massive. Not just for the US, but for the world, of which Australia is a part.

We need to be prepared for that prospect.

Trump has made no secret of his isolationist tendencies and unabashed “America First” policies.

He has pledged to drastically cut US support for Ukraine in that nation’s war against Russia, whose leader Vladimir Putin Trump has boasted of sharing a “very close relationship with” and has long complained about NATO allies not pulling their weight in terms of defence spending.

A second Trump presidency has the potential to upend global trade relations, a switch would have deep and wide-ranging ramifications for Australia.

Trump’s decision just days after his inauguration in 2017 to withdraw from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a deal brokered under the Obama administration, could have been devastating for Australia.

It was only through careful diplomacy that Australia, New Zealand and Japan were able to lead the effort to salvage the pact, binding together its remaining members.

And in 2018, Australia was able to secure an exemption from punishing 25 per cent tariffs on steel and aluminium imports, one of only three countries to do so.

Trump has already threatened to impose massive tariffs on Chinese imports should he win the presidency on Tuesday, a move which would flow through to the Australian economy given China’s position as our No.1 export market.

Australia and the US have been bound for more than 70 years through the ANZUS treaty. We will hope that a long and strong history of friendship will be enough to inoculate us from the deepest impacts of an isolationist Trump regime.

But we can’t count on it. A second term Trump has even less to lose than the first time around.

The era of absolute support for free trade from America is long over, and we need to prepare for all possibilities.