Trump effect is overstated but US needs steady Biden
HOW different would the world be today if Hillary Clinton had won the last US presidential election? Since the pandemic changed the world, this question has been posed more than a few times. Even more pertinent is how the next presidential election, now less than six months away, will impact on the world in general, and on Ireland in particular.
Donald Trump’s handling of the Covid crisis has been characteristically erratic. At first he claimed it was a hoax. Then he blamed China. Then he fought with state governors and the World Health Organisation (WHO), the UN body tasked with co-ordinating responses to cross-border health challenges.
There are serious questions about how the WHO handled the early stages of the crisis, and the influence autocratic China has over it, but there is little doubt that Clinton would not have had a major public spat with it if she were president now.
She would more likely have sought to bolster America’s global leadership, particularly at a time when it is being challenged by China in a way that has not been seen since the height of the Soviet Union’s influence.
But Trump’s clash with the WHO, including a withdrawal of US funding, probably didn’t change the course of the pandemic by much, if at all. Around the world, sovereign states have been the main actors in responding to the health emergency.
International organisations, such as the UN and even the EU, have played much lesser roles. That suggests that even if a more ‘normal’ US president had been at the helm, it would probably not have made much of a difference globally.
It’s moot how much of a difference a different president would have made to the US itself. Many of the decisions on dealing with the pandemic are taken by state governors and legislatures, not the president in the White House – it is often not appreciated on this side of the Atlantic that US presidents have fewer powers in many areas of domestic policy than Taoisigh have here because America’s federal government is highly decentralised.
Covid deaths in the US have reached 100,000. This is a horrifyingly large number and it is often presented as proof of Trump’s mishandling of the crisis. But given that relative to population, America’s confirmed death toll remains lower than Ireland’s, and the numbers losing their lives are trending downwards, it will be months if not years before any firm judgments can be made on how different countries handled the pandemic.
For all of Trump’s narcissistic bluster, which seems even more bizarre than usual during a public health emergency, his bull-in-a-china-shop behaviour may actually do less damage than one might expect.
That is true in other areas, too. For much of the world, one of the greatest worries on Trump’s election was his hostility to cross-border commerce. That was particularly the case for Ireland, which is so integrated in the US economy it could be considered the 51st state.
For many years before becoming president, Trump had railed against other countries ripping the US off. He has always believed that if Americans buy more from a given country than they sell to it, then that is proof of unfairness. As it happens, Ireland has long had a significant trade surplus with the US, and the president has at times highlighted massive sales of Irish-made goods to the US – which are predominantly pharmaceuticals and related products, often manufactured by American companies.
Despite Trump’s hostility to countries running trade surpluses with the US, and his imposition of some measures to curb imports from Europe, Ireland’s transatlantic trade has flourished under the 45th US president.
According to the CSO, exports to the US stood at €32bn in 2016, the year he was elected. They rose in each subsequent year. Last year, they were valued at almost 50pc more than three years earlier.
Exports across the Atlantic from the rest of Europe also point to Trump’s trade bark being worse than his bite, so far at least. The value of all EU-made goods shipped westwards has also grown every year since he took office.
Nor have other changes Trump has championed made any marked impact on US investment in Ireland. A major reform of the US tax regime, which came into effect at the beginning of 2018, did not lead to money and jobs being repatriated, as was feared by many in this country at the time. If anything, until the outbreak of the pandemic the presence of corporate America in Ireland was going from strength to strength. How might US politics be different today if the outcome in the 2016 election had been different?
Clinton is as loathed by conservatives as Trump is detested by liberals. If she had won four years ago, it is a safe bet to say the US would have continued down the polarising path it has been on for some time, albeit possibly less rapidly than under Trump.
The extent to which Americans’ views on almost every issue, including Covid, are increasingly coloured by their political persuasion makes one wonder how far a country can polarise without something eventually snapping.
Trump’s opponent in November is a much more conventional politician. Joe Biden is also less polarising than Trump or Clinton. There is some hope that he could bring more national unity at a time when every country will need cohesion as the grim prospects of more Covid deaths and economic depression loom.
It is probably fair to say that a victory for Biden would be welcomed by an overwhelming majority in this country and across much of Europe. In a world of much increased uncertainty as a result of the pandemic, having a US president who is not actively adding to existing uncertainty would be no little relief.
Ireland’s transatlantic trade has flourished under the 45th US president