As Donald Trump destroys the old world order a new myth is taking hold: before Trump, it is said, America benevolently provided the defence for the Western world, policing rogue states and promoting international free trade. (more…)
Category: USA
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Close the US military bases in Asia
The best strategy for the superpowers is to stay out of each other’s lanes. (more…)
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Trump’s shadow is all over this election
The president is bringing out the differences between political cultures and traditions in Australia and the US, especially in attitudes towards what government can and should do. (more…)
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Memory shapes China’s response to Trump’s tariffs
To asses China’s reaction to Donald Trump’s tariffs we have to go back around 165 years. (more…)
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China’s two ‘secret weapons’ in the tariff war
As of 15 April, the White House indicated on its website that tariffs on products imported from China could rise as high as 245%. (more…)
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Trump: the canker that cures?
A strong dose of home-grown fascism, of a uniquely American kind that no one else can be blamed for, may be just what the world needs to bump the US off the destructive path down which it has so often steered so many of its ever so sycophantic friends since World WarII. (more…)
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Trump: a ridiculous ego and incredibly ignorant
The analysis underpinning Donald Trump’s tariff policy is fatally flawed. Thus, it will fail to achieve its objective of restoring the living standards of his MAGA supporters. (more…)
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Xi pushes for fair trade after Trump tariffs land
After President Donald Trump’s decision to exempt selected electronic goods from tariffs, the gloves are temporarily off between Washington and Beijing. However, though some sanity has returned to the White House, the damage has already been done. (more…)
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Politics with Michelle Grattan: Hugh White on what the next PM should tell Trump and defending Australia – without the US
The Trump ascendancy has forced international economic issues and the future strategic outlook onto the Australian election agenda, even if they are at the margins. (more…)
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The Trump effect is a wrecking ball, and we’re in the blast zone
As the US president declares victory at every turn, he will leave behind a changed world. The implications for Australia are profound. (more…)
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When elephants clash: The strategic logic behind Trump’s tariffs and China’s response
The world is mesmerised — and unsettled — by US President Donald Trump’s tariffs. (more…)
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Language abuse in Trump’s second term: Why peace, compassion, and empathy matter more than ever
To cement their control, authoritarian leaders have to claim and empty the meaning out of terms such as “peace”, “compassion”, and “empathy”, just as they do when they label other people “fascists”, “radical Marxists”, “tyrants”, “terrorists” or “antisemites” – a trend spotted, for example, by Professor Timothy Snyder and Professor Noam Chomsky. (more…)
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China exposes US as targeting mobile communications
In March 2024, the United States and its Five Eyes allies sounded the alarm over “Volt Typhoon”, an alleged Chinese hacking group cast as a dire threat to Western critical infrastructure. (more…)
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US tariff policies strengthening China’s position in Asia
In geopolitics, there are no permanent friends or enemies, but there are permanent interests. While many countries in Southeast Asia have tried to maintain their economic ties with the US and China, President Donald Trump’s economic and tariff plans are inadvertently helping China strengthen its position in Asia. (more…)
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Will there be a war between China and the US?
Will there be a war between China and the US? This question suddenly gained popularity in early April 2024, mainly because, in response to Donald Trump’s so-called “reciprocal tariff” policy, China was the first country to impose strict countermeasures. (more…)
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The mother of all own goals?
Following the White House announcement of the “Liberation Day” tariffs, Andrew Tillett, writing in The Australian Financial Review, argued that, “Trump just gave China a free kick to tilt Asia in its favour”. (paywall) At Foreign Policy, the deputy editor, Amelia Lester, was wondering, at the same time, “Are Tariffs the End of the Australia-US Friendship”.(paywall) (more…)
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The stock market: an instantaneous referendum
Large movements in the stock market can cause unexpected events beyond it to happen very quickly. (more…)
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US LNG crippled as Australia seizes US$1.5b trade overnight
What happens when the world’s second-largest economy suddenly pulls the plug on billions of dollars in US energy exports without warning, without negotiation and without a single public signal? You get a global energy market in shock and Washington scrambling for answers. (more…)
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Trump’s trade war is bad, but how bad is up to the rest of us
At last, we know enough about US President Donald Trump’s opening move on tariffs to start thinking about what it all means. By imposing tariffs on America’s imports, he’s shot his economy in the foot, but the rest of the world decides how bad it’s likely to be by what we do in response. (more…)
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Trump’s tariffs appear to be misdirected
President Donald Trump has said his recent raft of tariff measures amounted to “Liberation Day” for US traders and not a fatal blow for a global trading system that has served international commerce well for decades following the turbulence that existed prior to and up to the Second World War in the early 1940s. (more…)
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Would an Iranian nuke really be so terrible?
Since the Iranian people overthrew the US-backed despotism of the Shah in 1979, Washington’s 4½-decade campaign of maximum pressure has been couched in terms of countering the Islamic Republic’s “destabilisation” of the region. (more…)
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Trump’s lying Band of Brothers
We know that Donald Trump is not fit to be sitting in the White House. He is a dangerously disordered president, and we have observed enough aberrant behaviour to fill a psychiatric text book. (more…)
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Brexit for the US: Trump’s tariffs are the sign of a nation in decline
Pop quiz: which country is the world’s leading producer of soybeans? Instinct might say China, or perhaps Japan, given the traditional centrality of soy to East Asian cuisine. (more…)
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Trump’s absurd trade policies will impoverish Americans and harm the world
US President Donald Trump is trashing the world trade system over a basic economic fallacy. He wrongly claims that America’s trade deficit is caused by the rest of the world ripping off the US, repeatedly stating things such as, “Over the decades, they ripped us off like no country has never been ripped off in history…” (more…)
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Keating says Trump’s tariffs mean death knell for NATO and ANZUS
Former Australian prime minister Paul Keating says Donald Trump’s neo-Monroeism has made it clear that America now calls only the Western hemisphere home. (more…)
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In every China-US war game scenario I’ve seen, America has lost
Global security alliances are in turmoil, and Australia needs to critically rethink its defence and foreign affairs policies. (more…)
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James Curran’s closing remarks to the Sovereignty and Security Conference on 31 March
The sense of urgency and rapid change that has pervaded the discussion today [31 March] has not obscured the fact that, as we know, this issue of the abrupt change in the relationship with the United States has been coming since at least Trump’s first term. And really from the disaster of Iraq and the 2008 global financial crisis. (more…)
