The Sunday Long Read

This post is now free to read 10th November 2024

Thanks to my Paid Subscribers this post has reached 50 likes so it is now free for everyone to read.

I know that some of you are a bit over politics right now, but we have just witnessed a most extraordinary Presidential election the USA, the outcome of which not only follows the populist trend that’s been developing in world politics over the last 10 years, but has put it on steroids. So please bear with me today as I explore a little of how Trump’s decisive victory came about and what it might portend for us here in New Zealand.

And let’s start with that word “populism”.

What is populism?

In Alice Through The Looking Glass  Humpty Dumpty says to Alice (in what the author Lewis Carroll describes as being in  a rather scornful tone),

“When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’
To which Alice replies,
“The question is whether you can make words mean so many different things.’

“Populism” is one of those words which seems to carry a different meaning depending on who is using it , but as I understand it, the term is often applied to a political movement that claims to champion the common person against an elite.

Now, that sounds quite socialist, doesn’t it? But the trick Trump and his Republican Party managed to pull off in last week’s election was to convince the majority of the American population that he was on the side of the workers when in fact he was really serving the interests of the very wealthy.

How did he do it?

One answer is that many people voted with their pocket, purse and prejudices, and not with an open heart and an empathetic mind.

Inflation

I’m by no expert on American politics, but from this distance Trump and the Republicans clearly used the same tactic the New Zealand political right exercised in our elections last year. He hammered the rising cost of living  to oust the  Democrats just as the current right- wing Coalition did to defeat the previous Labour, Green, Te Pāti Māori ,Coalition

“Are you better off than you were 4 years ago?” Trump asked at his rallies.

“No!” came the resounding reply.

While people tend to blame leaders for poor performance of the nation’s economy, the reality is that in many countries, including the USA and New Zealand, inflation is determined by a lot of factors that no leader can control. In New Zealand, for example, an important factor is the price of oil.

We don’t have our own significant oil supply so we are dependent on importing it at the world market price. And because we have chosen to largely move our goods around the country in fossil-fueled trucks, the rising cost of oil gets passed indirectly on to us in pretty much everything we buy or services we use,

For Kamala Harris the cost of living was a significant factor in her defeat. As one commentator put it, “ she simply couldn’t outrun inflation”. Despite the USA economy actually being in quite good post- Covid shape, people weren’t experiencing the upturn when they went to buy their groceries or fill up their car at the petrol station.

So, Populism, as practiced by politicians like Trump, is a kind of political slight- of- hand where the poor are conned into thinking the party complaining about the cost of living and offering tax breaks is on their side, when in fact it is the rich who will become richer when the party promoting lower taxes comes to power. (Sound familiar?)

Then there is the fear factor. Trump zeroed in on immigrants to stir up fear and claims he will deport millions of illegal migrant once he takes office. In our country the political right has used the fear of gangs to play on voter apprehensions. No suggestion of examining the social roots of these issues, just get rid of them or build bigger prisons and lock them up.

Demonising a group of people is a classic tactic of the political right and while I think it is a bridge to far to call David Seymour’s Treaty Principles Bill an act of demonisation, it does betray a finger-pointing strategy to encourage the belief that Māori are getting more privileges than the rest of us these days, a claim that is actually motivated by the mercenary belief that all this Treaty stuff is just getting in the way of negotiating the foreign ownership of our land and resources.

But let’s get back to the cost of living.

What About Trade?

You might argue that the world needs food and we are a great food producing country, so maybe we should just get a lot better at bargaining with countries that have stuff we need and that would help keep the cost of imported goods and therefore  the cost of living  down.

Well, in fact we are pretty good at trading on the world stage. Immediately after WW2 up until the mid 1960’s New Zealand was one of the farms of Britain and our economy boomed. But after the UK joined the common market in the early 1970’s Britain abandoned us and that forced us to find new markets for our agricultural products.

Today Mainland China is our biggest market taking 27.7% of our total exports, worth $US 11 billion. The USA comes second accounting for 12.3% of our total exports or $ US 4.8 billion and the UK is now 9^th on our list account for only 2% of our exports or $814.3 million.

So as an exporting country we’ve proved to be adaptable, but we are going to have to lift our production and export game even more now that Trump is about to return to the White House with his America First ideology.

If Trump sticks to what he said during the election and impose a 60% tariff on the entry of Chinese goods into the USA and 20% on imports from the rest of the world, then that is going to not only push up the price of just about everything in America it is going to have a radical effect on world trade.

China, for example, whose economy is currently struggling, may decide to start a trade war with the USA which, in turn, might mean that New Zealand finds it more to our advantage to increase trade with China rather than persevere with the USA, especially as Trump has shown very little interest in the well-being of the people of Oceania.

What would such a Trade shift mean for 5 Eyes and AUKUS?  

Stay tuned!

The Big Myth

Another aspect of the recent USA election that readers will recognise from the New Zealand situation, is the belief that because someone is purportedly a good businessman he will therefore make a great leader of the nation.

In Trump’s case the idea that he is a brilliant businessman is a huge manufactured myth built during his days fronting the TV Show The Apprentice and which clearly many Americans still believe. The reality is that Trump is a very, very bad businessman. New York Times journalists David Barstow, Susanne Craig and Russ Buettner even won a Pulitzer Prize for revealing the many sham financial schemes and instances of outright fraud he committed, and that his businesses had lost billions dollars.

As it stands Trump has been convicted on 34 counts of falsifying business records stemming from a hush money payment of $US 130,000 to adult porn star Stormy Daniels. He has also been convicted of sexually abusing writer E. Jean Carroll so ,all told, Trump is currently facing almost half a billion dollars in fines plus interest.

And yet, where once even one incident of this sort t would have ended a political career, Trump’s bad behaviour and monstrous lies were either ignored or forgiven by 53% of white women who were in step with white men, 59% of whom voted for the former president.

Why did they vote for a despicable self-centred con man over a woman with a long, clean, record of public service ? I think it is beyond question that racism and sexism played its part in Trump winning back the White House, and some of it, such as the demonising  of illegal immigrants, came directly from the Fascist playbook.

So, what?

I’m not saying I understand why Trump won. I don’t! I really don’t. But I think there are lessons the political left in our country need to learn from how Trump and the Republicans pulled off this election coup if we want a better, fairer, Aotearoa/New Zealand.

And the most important of these, (which I think applies particularly to the NZ Labour Party) is to stop pandering to the haves at the expense of the have nots, because it isn’t making the lives of the many any easier, and a consequence the political right are able  to say “Look- the left  don’t know how to manage the economy. Let us ( and our rich mates ) do it because our leader is a former businessman.”

In short, Labour needs to admit the great mistake of introducing neoliberalism and return to their roots. They need to learn again to speak the language of the poor so the many can realise the collective power of their vote, and Labour needs to instigate real policies that will put end to tax free capital gains and wealth by stealth in order to start closing the gap between the rich and the poor in our country.

As for the Greens, who already have some socialist-style economic policies, it was really sad that Efeso Collins pass away in February of this year because the Greens need to stop looking less like Remuera and more like Manurewa if they want the many to convince the many give them their vote.

And Te Pāti Māori? Keep up the good fight on Te Tiriti , because it is one of the few defences we have against international companies and big money buying up our country and exploiting our environment in the name of greed.

If you are a Free Subscriber please consider upgrading to Paid. The current government has cut all funding for public interest journalism and the broadscasters are showing little interest in supporting independent investigative documentaries which is why I started this Substack.

Your $9 per month subscription will help me keep working as public interest writer, podcaster and film maker- to speak truth to power and give a public voice to those who have none.

And thank you to my Paid Subscribers. Your support for my public journalism work is much appreciated. Please restack the article if you like it and recommend bryanbruce.substack.com to your friends and whanau.