Image: Colleen P
This November, Americans will pick Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump as their next president, but the results will resonate far beyond their borders.
The US is one of Australia’s most important allies, and Clinton and Trump each present very different ideas of how America should respond to the rest of the world.
Perhaps most significant to Australia is a question on which Trump and Clinton have more in common with one another than with President Barack Obama: the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).
The TPP is a twelve-nation deal that lowers trade-barriers in the Asia–Pacific, but it’s also a key plank in the Obama administration’s attempt to reorient the focus of US foreign policy and establish an international order driven by America’s interests rather than those of a rising China.
Australia helped negotiate the agreement; the Turnbull government supports it. Clinton and Trump, however, have both voiced concerns about the TPP.
Trump, the nominee of the usually pro-trade Republican Party, has savagely attacked the deal, calling it a “job killer.” More curiously, Trump has accused the deal of benefiting China at America’s expense, despite China not being a party to it.
As Obama’s secretary of state, Clinton supported the TPP, but now says she opposes it. Her criticism is tempered compared to Trump’s however — at her address at the Democratic National Convention, while cheering crowds waved anti-TPP placards, she reached out circumspectly to voters who “believe that we should say ‘no’ to unfair trade deals, that we should stand up to China.”
Many analysts wonder if Clinton still plans on backing a modified version of the TPP, though it is unclear whether the agreement could withstand any renegotiation at this late date.
For Australia, the difference between the candidates is clearer when it comes to their international outlook. Trump has repeatedly charged US allies of taking advantage of the United States, and suggested he would not have a problem with a nuclear-armed Japan — a prospect that would increase tensions in a volatile part of the world.
Further, he has unnerved allies in Eastern Europe by suggesting he might not honour defence treaties like NATO; if he were to take a similar approach in Asia, the security interests of allies like Australia, South Korea, Japan, or the Philippines would be significantly weakened.
Clinton, on the other hand, offers a much more familiar approach to international relations, although her outlook is more hawkish than that of the Obama administration.
Incremental changes notwithstanding, Australia would have a much better idea of how the US would behave in its region under a Clinton presidency.
