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Something doesn't seem quite right.
Welcome's not quite right.
My name is Ed and this is the 6th of a series of interviews that Amanda and I
recorded at the Words on the Waves Writers Festival this year.
This time we're speaking with Bruce Wolpe.
Bruce is a Senior fellow at the United States Studies Centre at the University
of Sydney and he was at Words on the Waves as part of the New World Order
panel and to talk about his book What Trump's Second Term means for Australia.
We spoke to Bruce about the 1st 130 days of Trump's second term and what it might
mean for American democracy.
So here is our conversation with Bruce Wolpe.
So we're here at Words on the Waves with Bruce Walby.
We certainly are.
The waves are here in the last light of a beautiful day.
Witcher is comic.
This is a pretty good place to be.
Well, you've definitely got the best seat in
the house over here in this little little studio that we've got.
Yeah.
So you've just come off your panel, which is entitled New World Order.
Tell us about the panel.
We had a great panel.
We had Emma Connors.
We had Jeff Raby, myself, Jonathan Pearlman,
experts really in their fields.
Emma Moore on Asian Pacific thick Jeff on China,
Jonathan on foreign policy generally, and then me talking from AUS perspective,
American politics perspective.
And it was a it was a surprisingly deep conversation just given we only had an
hour.
My focus was really on what's happening in America and how is it affecting
American foreign policy and the changes in the world.
And there are a couple conclusions that we have, you know,
just over 130 days of the Trump presidency.
America is no longer the leader of the free world.
And that is a really profound thing to say.
No one is following America anymore.
And they're figuring out how do we protect ourselves?
What do we do for ourselves?
And then on the economic front, we've had a structure erected after World
War 2 on a trading relationships and freer markets and reducing tariffs,
duties and taxes so that there can be prosperity and security around the world.
There have been ups and downs, but mostly up.
That system is now gone because Trump has trashed it.
And so that has really profound consequences.
And American foreign policy is no longer LED under Trump by idealism and beliefs
and that American values can be universal values.
We stand with people who support those values.
We want to advance the world.
It is now become an exercise in self interest.
Is this good for the United States and not could be the United States values,
but could be the United States in purely material terms.
And that is a profound change.
We're going through it.
So the question is what does it mean immediately?
How long is this going to last?
What do we come out another side?
We don't know.
Well, I mean you're here in Australia.
So well, let's but Australia, let's just talk today,
even though this will come out some days after we record this.
Well, today the president went to Pittsburgh to
talk about a steel plants that Nippon Steel is going to take over from US Steel
and Trump said it's terrific there.
Nippon is investing so much, but I'm going to unilaterally raise the
tariff on steel for 25 to 50% and that hits Australia is this deal on aluminium.
It was a 25% until today.
And that is kind of stunning.
He can just do it.
And he expects Australia to just kind of take it.
And the trade minister, Don Farrell, says this is not how you treat an ally.
He's not how you treat friend.
And he's right.
So they're going to be, there's going to be much more of this.
It's amazing how quickly this has all happened as well.
Like he said, 130 days, yeah, roughly after he took office and decades
worth of the trust built up in America, that is now it's as if the parent has
left and everyone realises they have to kind of fend for themselves.
Especially when you see the the treatment of like countries like Canada as a
prospective 51st state and realising actually we need to form our own
relationships and act, at least for the time being,
as if America is not our friend.
Yes, on the security front, the relationship front, I mean,
that is still, there's a long way to go because the
question is where?
Where's the US that's going to land?
Is it still going to be a democracy?
Is it really going to be a functioning democracy at the end of Trump's term or
not?
If it is, fine, American democracy is safe.
But if it's not, the United States is still over,
the United States.
Now, under those circumstances, why should Australia be the closest ally?
Why should we hold them and say they're our greatest ally when they're not acting
in the way they have for several generations now?
And that is a real problem on the commercial front.
I think Australia is doing very smart things.
Protectionism is coming out of the United States.
Australia is a trading nation and believes in free trade.
So what are they doing?
They're setting up the talks to establish a free trade agreement with the European
Union.
We're being failed a year ago, two years ago, they're back.
And I think there's going to be a deal and to use Trump's almost famous worst,
a deal.
And that would be really important.
So Australia needs to forge a series, as many free trade agreements as possible.
The US is going to hell on protectionism, but the free trade lives for Australia
and the benefit of other countries around the world.
OK, I'm wondering if you have a view on, I guess Trump's motivations and power.
We talk about like protectionism as a bad idea,
but there's it's also coming from a place of like wanting to encourage industry.
Do you think this all comes from this point of power or is there like some some
good intentions there that that just misguided?
There are 4 isms to Trumpism.
It's protectionism, tariffs, it's nativism borders,
it's isolationism which is withdrawing from the world.
And all the, the architecture that was set up,
World Health Organisation, Paris Climate agreement,
World Trade Organisation, all that, that the United Nations,
we don't even have Aun ambassador there right now.
I can vote in both countries.
That's really good.
And then nationalism, America first.
So that's what Trump projects, but he wants at every occasion,
he wants whatever is being engaged in to benefits the United States.
Anything that benefits another country is he's hostile to it.
It doesn't matter that Australia has a trade deficit with the United States.
They're still going to punish today.
They're just going to keep raising the tariffs.
And it's, it's really a very difficult thing to
accept after a century, a century of mateship as an Australian
ambassador in Washington coined it.
Do you think there will be some pushback?
Because I remember in Trump's first term, the first, you know,
100 or so days were also very frenetic and full of all this change and there was
that deep state pushback.
Is that happening now?
Is it going to happen?
There's a big difference.
The big difference is that he came in, did not win the popular vote,
won the Electoral College and minority president becomes president.
And but there were enough people around legacy from the day before he became
president to push back on him.
Even though he controlled the House, Senate and the White House today he
controlled the House, the Senate and the White House.
But he has conquered the segments of society that were organised and ready to
test him profoundly in the first turn.
So there's no testing he's getting.
He's getting away with.
He's able to project his power across everything that he wants to do.
Now his base is about 40% of the country.
They are the people who feel that the world outran them, jeopardise their jobs,
their incomes, their economic security, quality of life.
And Trump is their hero.
He's the populist champion.
They believe in him.
They have followed him for eight years now.
And they voted to elect him because they want him to do the nationalism and the
protectionism and borders and all that stuff.
They they voted for him so that he, they believe he will do it.
They want him to do it.
Yeah.
And they voted for him, I think not really understanding what
that meant.
The whole no tariffs, I disagree.
They did, they voted for him.
They understood exactly.
But do you think they understood what tariffs meant and the fact that that it
results in an increase in costs?
This is my labour union vote.
Members of labour unions.
They voted for Trump.
He's going to protect their jobs.
He raised the tariffs to 50% in Pittsburgh today for the steel industry,
saying your your job is going to be secure.
The cheering from the union crowd was huge.
Yeah.
But is there still the the understanding that that means that goods they're
purchasing from other countries is also going to increase in cost?
This is where what is final payoff here?
If there's rampant inflation and that triggers A recession and the Federal
Reserve has to control the inflation, has to raise interest rates and the
economy goes into the toilet, suddenly it doesn't look so good.
I'm wondering your thoughts on, we're talking Trumpism here.
To what extent that extends beyond Trump himself as an individual,
like if he were to die, for example, or for whatever reason move out of public
favour, To what extent does Trumpism live beyond
Trump?
Trumpism succeeded Reaganism.
Ronald Reagan changed the political culture of the country and it took 12
years from his election in 1980 for the Democrats to field president and vice
president from the centre of the country to Clinton and Gore to wit.
And they had two terms.
So it will take the repair job on this, if in fact that's where the country lands,
and say we went too far and too extreme here, we've got to come back.
And the repair job will take many years.
In the area of health and science, he's dismantling the Centres for Disease
Control, the National Institutes of Health.
All the research attacking the universities means there will be less
research in the benefits of flow, flow rebuilding,
that it's not going to be done overnight.
It's so much, it's so much easier to destroy something
than to build something.
And you're talking about the potential loss of democracy right,
itself as an outcome.
Do you think that is Trump's aim or is that a natural consequence of just,
I guess, the dilution of the normal order of
things that this presidency is?
Well, he's using very strong tactics to deport
people.
And the question is whether those tactics come into play against people in cities
who are demonstrating against his presidency.
And he calls in the military to to restore order that's barred under law.
And that's why the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mark Miley,
said he was he made a mistake when he marched with Trump into Lafayette Park to
the church where he held up the Bible because in this in the wake of George
Floyd's murder.
But the current chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, he'll follow the order.
So.
So if you have, Trump is attacking the media.
He wants to take away licences and certainly TV networks.
He is sending a bill to Congress to defund National Public Radio and the
Public Broadcasting Service, Public TV.
If you take over the media troops in the streets, go after your enemies,
your people and corporations who still support diversity and inclusion and
everything like that.
Turn the tax authorities on them.
Take away licences they have under the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Either drop or start antitrust investigations.
That's all within the power of the president.
And if he does that, then no, America doesn't have a functioning
democracy anymore.
I think it's interesting because just the role of the president in the US,
it's it's fairly unique.
I think that environment, the power that's given to the president
there, because of course it's a union, right?
It's a union of of 50 states.
Like I guess people are questioning if Trump is taking power that doesn't
actually exist in the presidency.
You're right.
This is a really profound question.
The way the Constitution is structured, you have 3 coordinate coequal branches of
government.
They have the executive, the legislators, the Congress, and the courts.
So far, the other branches of government are not
standing up to Trump in the the House and Senate controlled by Republicans.
They're not.
It's early in the game.
If their view changes because things go South really badly,
Republicans will start standing up and saying you can't do this.
But they're not there.
So they're not doing any investigations or oversight about what Trump is doing.
They're not passing any legislation he doesn't want to pass.
And the courts so far have, even though there have been over 175
rulings against him, yet nothing that he started has yet
prompted permanently stopped by the courts.
There is this case on the tariffs and whether he can proceed with the
Liberation Day tariffs that will get to the Supreme Court.
And that would be, I think, a defining moment.
If they say you do not have a basis in law to impose these tariffs and say,
say thou shalt thy, he says, yes, I can.
And if that seems to be the strategy so far, if that happens,
that's an existential moment for American democracy.
No president has disobeyed in order of the Supreme Court.
And there's no example that I can think of of Donald Trump ever walking something
back and admitting that he doesn't have the ability to do something he's already
done.
He never admits, he never retreats, he never recants.
He he only does one thing forward, go forward and flush.
And that's what he does.
So in this environment then where, you know, we're talking about democracy,
I'm wondering, is there a post democracy state?
Like what comes after democracy if or is that the goal is to get back to democracy
in your view?
Like it's it's too early.
It's just too early to say.
And what you have now is just a huge culture war reaction to what is seen as
woke, progressive, radical left policies, ideas, initiatives.
He wants that destroyed.
And then we'll see, you know, what can be built.
So it, it has gone so far in the Pentagon that
they've taken down web pages of people of colour serving in the arms,
heroes in the armed forces.
I mean, this is disgusting.
Yeah.
And I mean, it's it's shocking to the point where I
can't actually fathom the support for it.
Yeah.
And but yet it, it carries on.
It's justified somehow on, on diversity, equity, inclusion stuff.
I mean, he's denigrated people of colour and
women who serve in high positions when the there was a crash of the helicopter
in the plane outside National Airport, Reagan National Airport in Washington
shortly if we became president, he says, well, maybe the crew was ADEI hire.
In other words, he's making you look at women of and
people of colour and power and saying are they really up to it?
So it's poisoning perceptions and that's dangerous stuff.
It makes you think about things you do we're thinking about before and it can
only be in a pejorative way.
I love these happy notes that we're in.
Well, I, I want to help pivot because so your,
your book is called what's Trump's second term means for Australia?
Yes.
So Trump is over there.
We can't do anything about him.
What does that mean for Australia?
Well, as discussed in the session, Australia's democracy is one of the
strongest in the world is going to survive just fine.
But if he retreats from the world, what does that mean for Australia?
Because we're part of the security blanket of allies.
If he turns on his allies, then what does that mean for Australia?
So I, I think the most important thing in
foreign policy Australia can do is go deep and go big and double and redouble,
redouble and redouble.
Again, what was started under Albanese and Penny
Wong rebuild the relationships in Australia has throughout the Asia Pacific
and they've done an excellent job, but it needs more.
And then figure out well, who are our allies and it'll be those in
NATO and those in Japan, South Korea and so forth.
But we really need to think about if the US is no longer a great ally and what are
we doing with August, what does that all mean and what we're
going to do with China and how do we engage.
So that's all to be done.
But I don't have any doubts about Australia's identity or threats to
Australia's identity or what it wants to achieve.
But when you have a political campaign here,
the Queensland election last year and abortion shows up just a few days before
you vote, well, where do you think that came from?
And then a Liberal senator says let's make Australia great again.
Well, where does that come from?
But this is the thing that I feel is alarming to me is that people are
chronically online and those national borders for people who are online and for
people who I guess their understanding of politics or whatever might be quite
limited, How are they perceiving that?
They're not perceiving this divide between Australia and the US,
They're perceiving where I'm in the same conversation with these people across the
world.
So yes.
But I still think even among conservative politically conservative Australians,
there's still a great sense of pride if this country is distinct from the United
States and they they know when and well, just look at I mean,
the last federal election, the voices were clear.
We're not going to go down that road.
It is discouraging though, to see some of that same rhetoric pop up
after that election was, you know, lost for the conservatives in Australia,
the rigged election rhetoric, the same kind of anti democratic.
I'm hearing lots of people call for getting rid of preferential voting in
Australia.
It's really discouraging to see that kind of response that's been happening,
but that's been happening for years and years and years.
And no one honestly believes that.
There's no significant number of people who believe it.
And look at the recounts that have occurred after this election.
It comes down to a handful of votes.
No one's going to court.
No one's saying it's rich across the AEC as we should.
So we're going to be OK.
Well, that's that is encouraging.
That's encouraging, I think.
Thank you very much, Bruce.
Thank you.
This has been a special presentation of the Not Quite Right podcast in
collaboration with Words on the Ways Writers Festival.
Check the show notes For more information about Words on the Waves and the books
mentioned in this episode.
If you're new to the podcast, please join us again for our regular
episodes where we talk about media, culture, and the art of writing.
Something doesn't seem quite right.