We still have a few months to go before inauguration, the Biden Administration is already beginning the peaceful transition of power to a second Trump Administration. What we are witnessing is no unproven claims of voter fraud or claims of vote tampering. I will very much doubt we will see a march to Congress on January 6th or widespread social unrest. Funny how no voter fraud occurs when you win, but fraud occurs when you lose.

What we did witness was the failure of the Kamala Harris team to develop a narrative, it was clearly not enough to claim Trump was a criminal. I would suggest the attempts to impeach Trump really helped his case. The first failure of the Biden Administration was the halting of construction of the border wall with Mexico. The project was started and should have been completed no matter who was in power. Kamala Harris as Vice President was allocated the task of stopping the flood of immigrants- that was a failure.

The Democrats clearly lost the support of working Americans, first they lost white American workers, then Latino American workers and finally black American workers. This was clearly a major problem, should they seek to return to [and remain in] power in four years time, they need to address this pressing issue. Clearly the Democrats sent an incorrect message to the American public, they really need to reflect on who they represent.

Will the Trump Administration bring manufacturing back to the US? That would be unlikely in the next four years, yet what Trump did was offer them hope, something that Kamala Harris was unable to do. Instead, the Democrats pushed this social agenda that alienated large parts of the US, the vocal woke brigade pushing these fringe issues pretty much turned the population off. Bill Clinton summed it up perfectly back in the 1990s with the “it is the economy stupid” phrase.

So Trump looks like he will raise tariffs against a large number of nations. Australia has a free-trade agreement with the US that sees greater imports into Australia from the US than exports from Australia into the US. It would be unlikely that tariffs would be raised against Australia with such a trade imbalance. Where Australia could benefit is if the US engages in trade and tariff actions against other nations, Australia has the ability to offer goods and services to affected nations.

My concerns are with Ukraine, Tramp and Vance have had some negative comments against Zelensky in particular and Ukraine in general. Trump simplistically thinks Zelensky should negotiate with Putin from a position of weakness and get a deal done. Total madness, Ukraine was pushing hard against Russia until the Republicans withheld military funding placing Ukraine in a venerable position. All the gains Ukraine made were destroyed by inward looking Republicans. Trump is a fanboy of Putin, he could offer him everything he wants, there is a chance Trump could withdraw the US from NATO, that is a real possibility. Trump claims he could stop the Russian-Ukraine war in a day if he comes to power, surrendering to a bad deal could easily stop the war, but seriously, this needs to be a good deal for Ukraine.

What does this mean to Australia from a defence standpoint? The nuclear submarine deal could be scuttled, Australia is already increasing capacity Fleet Base West in anticipation of nuclear submarine maintenance and repairs at the facilities. This will be for British and US nuclear submarines before the Australian nuclear submarines come on line. There is already a US marine contingent in Darwin with US strategic bombers based at Tindal air base in Katherine.

Will we see similar dysfunction as we witnessed in the first Trump Administration? You would expect Donald to get smarter, we will see. Elon Musk has been a very vocal supporter of Trump, I would expect Elon to try to exert pressure on regulatory bodies that he views as hindering him. Democratic institutions could well be compromised, Trump has clearly indicated he prefers the strongarm approach to power, most would expect him to abuse this power now that he looks like having as close to absolute power a US President can hold.