Six days before Australia Day next year, Donald Trump will take over as US president for the second time. It shouldn’t be long before Trump 2.0 begins to change the global political climate, both through his domestic policy settings and the approach he takes on the international stage.
Whether the next Australian federal election takes place early (in February or March) or Anthony Albanese sticks to his promise to serve a full term and run it in May, the campaign will play out amid major political changes abroad.
Trump will try to carry out mass deportations from the United States. To fulfill this election promise, he can even use the US military to achieve his desired result. The environment will be tense and contentious.
How will Australia’s political class respond? It will put Labor and the Greens in a more difficult position than the Coalition. The Greens will certainly talk about it, what will Albo do?
Trump will certainly withdraw the US from the Paris Agreement, just as he did in 2016. Such a move has the potential to change the nature of the climate change debate in Australia.
Labor has gone out of its way to defend its emissions targets and condemn Peter Dutton’s nuclear ambitions. Trump is not the kind of foreign leader who will remain diplomatically out of Australian affairs with the election looming.
Will Trump’s rhetorical interventions – which are sure to favor Dutton over Albo – help the opposition leader or set off warning bells for Australian voters who see Trump as too extreme?
Although Trump responded to the prevailing American mood, the American electoral system has no mandatory voting or preference flows. Such differences, combined with cultural differences between our countries, mean its appeal in the US may not be matched here.
Albo threatens to become the proverbial ham in the sandwich when two superpowers, metaphorically speaking, go to war
Can Dutton use Trump’s pro-drilling sentiments to isolate Labor and the Greens as threats to mining lead to prosperity?
Dutton must be careful not to try to emulate Trump in the mistaken belief that this will help him match Trump’s political success.
That said, the new US president’s ‘drill baby, drill’ ethos may be attractive where it matters most in Australia. Mining is essential to our export economy, so supporting the sector should be important to all Australians, but especially Western Australians.
Currently, internal party polls suggest Labor is performing better than expected in the West, with the Liberals showing little confidence in winning more than one, possibly two, seats. The Morrison government lost six of the 11 seats it held before the 2022 election, the federal Liberal Party’s worst performance in WA in 35 years.
Can Dutton use Trump’s pro-drilling sentiments to isolate Labor and the Greens as threats to mining lead to prosperity? Help win back more seats in the West to help dislodge Albo’s parliamentary majority?
Trump’s protectionist agenda poses its own threat to Australian exports of all kinds, but it is the impact Trump’s tariffs could have on China that looms largest.
China will have to respond: will a domestic stimulus package in China, focused on infrastructure, create even more demand for Australian iron ore? Or will China retaliate against US allies, including Australia, for Trump’s tariff changes?
Both scenarios will put our Prime Minister in a difficult position ahead of a close election. Albo threatens to become the proverbial ham on the sandwich when two superpowers, metaphorically speaking, go to war.
Billionaire Elon Musk has already called out Albo and his government over social media policies that harm his business interests. Musk will soon take a formal role within the Trump administration, celebrating free speech on technology platforms around the world while cutting government departments at home.
There is every chance that Musk will try to do in Australia what he failed to do prior to the US election: support a political horse of his choice. That horse will certainly not be Albo.
Our pre-election period will take place in the midst of all of the above, and that’s before you even think about what might happen in Ukraine, the Middle East, and even Taiwan and the South China Sea. Although these roiling issues are likely to be more important in the coming years than in the coming months, even beyond the first half of 2025.
Challenges for whoever wins the Australian elections, that’s for sure.
The word that best describes the impact Trump’s victory will have on the next federal election campaign is volatility.
Without overestimating the impact an American president can have on our domestic polity, Trump is larger than life and cannot be ignored as a volatile factor that both major party leaders and their strategists must take into account.
That perceptiveness could even be a factor as Albo considers when to call the next election.