Friday 29 Mar 2024
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This article first appeared in Forum, The Edge Malaysia Weekly, on November 14 - 20, 2016.

 

In trying to make sense of what happened last week — and the improbability of another Brexit-like event — one thing became patently clear: this was very much like what happened in the UK, the voice of the 99% making themselves heard, once again.

Trump’s victory, very much like the events surrounding June 23 in Great Britain, was again largely driven by an angry, downtrodden (and very broke) working class that had gained precious little from globalisation. A policy said to serve a broad swathe, but which instead only enriched a narrow cabal of top-level bankers, corporate elites and self-serving bureaucrats and central bankers, turning them into an even narrower, more exclusive and fabulously rich minority.

No matter that Trump was as rich, if not richer, than many of the co-called “elites” — poor Americans saw him as one of their own, not of the ilk of the elites.

“The Donald”s campaign posited a simple and powerful message: he would save America from the perils of an open and free trading policy that had allowed powerful foreign nations to divert the country’s wealth to their pockets, thereby relegating the US to the fringes of global business.

Powerful nations like Brazil, Russia, India and China, which not coincidentally, had been excluded from the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement (TPP) and Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), marketed as free-trade pacts, but which had been called out by critics as American economic colonialism in disguise.

How else could one have explained the secrecy, the carve-outs, the bromantic golf games?

Instead, Trump’s promises of a warmer, fuzzier, future — one where America might be returned to a long-bygone and halcyon era when it was rich and sheltered from the world’s economic maelstroms, rang truer and deeper than Hillary Clinton’s message, which far too much resembled a continuum of the establishment status quo.

That is, one of continued proximity to Wall Street, wealthy corporate interests and a too-comfortable affinity with talented immigrants and privileged, Ivy League graduates (still) grabbing the lion’s share of the nation’s wealth.

So, having established that lightning does indeed strike twice, and which explains the speed of our own nation’s pivot to China (did our premier know — nay, feel — something we didn’t?), where next from here?

 

On the issues that matter most to us

One: Trump could deliver on his pre-election bluster and call off trade deals like the TPP and the North American Free Trade Agreement with Mexico and Canada, ending with the imposition of a 45% tariff on goods made in China.

He would do this by reforming the tax code and tearing up said trade policies to “make it easier to hire, invest, build, grow, produce and manufacture in America”. All in an effort, as he has said, “to make America great again”.

Two: He could see through the one issue which also galvanised Leave supporters during Brexit — immigration.

On numerous occasions, Trump has pledged to build a wall on the Mexican border and called for a blanket ban on Muslim immigration and the deportation of as many as 11 million illegal workers and settlers. Not good, in other words, for foreign relations.

Three: Cut income taxes across the board, the most since the Reagan era. By slashing corporate taxes to 15% and individual rates to three brackets of 12%, 25% and 33% (with a 0% rate for the masses), it could prompt a massive wave of closures at foreign corporate outposts.

If that were to happen, huge US businesses could close shop overseas (like business process outsourcing companies in the Philippines and India), and return home to do business instead.

Four: Disavow America’s climate change promises. Trump distrusts signs of global warming, describing it as a Chinese hoax intended to make US manufacturers uncompetitive.

If he goes ahead and “cancels” the Paris climate agreement (a deal Barack Obama struck with 

China), it could spell disaster for many of the world’s low-lying regions, many of whom lie in Asia, like Bangladesh, India and the Maldives.

As the twin Black Swan events of Brexit and a Trump presidency has shown, the world is clearly on the cusp of a populist repudiation of an era of inequality, globalisation and wage deflation.

This has emboldened France, which is now going the same way, with the looming possibility of a Marine Le Pen/National Front victory in the country’s general election next June. A leader who, very much like Trump, proffers simplified truths and political messages centred on rejection and nostalgia to drum up not-inconsiderable support.

And then there is Catalonia’s independence referendum in September, Germany’s elections in October and Italy’s in May 2018, the last point on the calendar it can hold its polls. All of which have every possibility of shaking up the status quo, given the recent pressures of terror attacks and Syrian refugees.

Things are changing, and fast. Maybe too fast for us ordinary guys to grasp and fathom.

So far, the media has painted a bleak and apocalyptic picture. But on reflection, is it?

My industry, the media, among those most to blame for the bad press, is removed and distant from the heartland.

Very much an establishment machine today despite what we may think or want to believe, very few of us really, truly understand the difficulties and troubles felt by the common folk — which goes a long way towards the shock and surprise expressed in the popular media by, first, Brexit, and now, a Trump presidency.

And of course the bankers, corporations, business elites and central bankers would paint a gruesome picture of proceedings — it is their dream existence, after all, which is being torn down, bit by painful bit.

But maybe it’s not all that bad, this redrawing of battle lines. A new world order is emerging in the US and Europe, and there’s an opportunity for the little people to stake a claim where before there was precious little chance.

Here in Asia? Not so fast-lah.

Judging by the speed at which Asean and Asia have pivoted to China, it is increasingly a case of a new boss in town. Malaysia’s and the Philippines’ volte-face towards China has, by now, been well-documented.


Khoo Hsu Chuang is contributing editor at The Edge Malaysia

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