Prime Minister Scott Morrison's arrogance brings Australia closer to an all out trade war with China

 

China is said to account for around one-third of Australia's export income. 

This may not continue into the future.

Given the growing tension between Australia and China, caused in great measure by Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison acting as US President Donald Trump's annoying little barking dog snapping at the heels of Xi Jinping, it is possible that in 2021 Australia could face over $105 billion in lost trade with China.

 The Monthly, 15 December 2020:

…..Beijing appears to have officially blacklisted Australian coal for the foreseeable future. The Chinese government sure knows how to hit where it hurts. Australian coal exports to China were worth $14 billion last year, and, for the many coal-lovers in the Coalition, the one argument for the industry’s continued existence – the financial one – has just been crushed. It was hard enough justifying a project such as Adani’s Carmichael mine before; now it looks ridiculous. Trade Minister Simon Birmingham has urged China to clarify the reported ban, calling it unacceptable and discriminatory, while Scott Morrison somewhat hopefully called the reports “media speculation”, and warned that a blacklisting would “obviously be in breach of WTO rules and our own free-trade agreements, so we would hope that it is not the case”. It’s a lot more than media speculation, of course. And it’s hardly coincidental that this news has arrived hard on the heels of the stoushes over Australian iron ore. Where is all this heading?

Australian businesses are going to suffer, and people are going to get hurt. Journalist Anna Krien has been tracking a terrible situation involving sailors marooned off the coast of China, on ships full of Australian coal. For up to eight months, these ships have been unable to offload their cargo into Chinese ports due to an informal government ban. “China doesn’t want it. The seller won’t leave. A game of chicken except these men’s lives are at stake. Three are on suicide watch,” Krien reported via Twitter. “Their medicine has run out. The water they are being supplied with is bad – causing rashes that won’t heal and [are] pus-filled. They have families. One sailor’s father back home in India has died, his mother is dying.”

Some of the stranded seafarers haven’t been allowed to disembark for 20 months due to COVID-19. Do Birmingham, Morrison, Canavan, Pitt and Payne care about these workers? Does the Minerals Council? Let alone the hundreds of thousands of workers in the other sectors hit by China’s abrupt strikes on Australian products…...

Australian Prime Minster Morrison & Foreign Minster Payne not as sanguine about trading partners' pledges of zero green house gas emission targets as they pretend?

This was Australian Prime Minister and Liberal MP for Cook Scott Morrison after the world left this country even further behind with regard to climate change policy and emissions reduction targets…..

The Sydney Morning Herald, 28 October 2020:

Prime Minister Scott Morrison says he will not be dictated to by other governments' climate change goals, declaring he is not worried about the future of Australia's exports despite four of the country's top trading partners adopting net-zero emissions targets.

China, Japan, Britain and South Korea, which account for more than $310 billion in Australian annual trade between them, have all now adopted the emissions target by 2050 or 2060, ramping up pressure on Australia's fossil fuel industry. Coal and natural gas alone are worth more than 25 per cent of Australia's exports, or $110 billion each year….

Major Australian export companies such as Rio Tinto, BHP, major agriculture groups and multinational food companies are pursuing carbon neutrality, which experts say is a move to avoid being stung with trade tariffs or charges by countries that have set net-zero targets….

Australian Foreign Affairs Minister and Liberal Senator Marise Payne was just as stubborn as her own prime minister.

However, it was made obvious by at least one other media article published the next day that Morrison was perhaps uncomfortable with the situation and how it might read to the general public.

The Guardian, 29 October 2019:

The Morrison government has quietly appointed an expert panel to come up with new ways to cut greenhouse gas emissions and given it less than a month to come up with recommendations.

In what is being seen by observers as an acknowledgment that its main climate change policy, the $2.55bn emissions reduction fund, is failing to cut national pollution, the government has appointed a panel of four business leaders and policy experts to suggest options to expand it.

The panel is headed by Grant King, the outgoing president of the Business Council of Australia and a former chief executive of Origin Energy. It was appointed by the minister for emissions reduction, Angus Taylor, in mid-October but has not been made public…..

The panel has been established despite Morrison and Taylor maintaining they have set out “to the last tonne” of carbon dioxide how Australia will meet the 2030 emissions target announced before the Paris climate conference . In reality, national emissions have risen each year since 2015  and most analyses  suggest the government will not reach the goal, a 26%-28% cut below 2005 levels, under current policies…..

Expert Panel examining oppo... by The Guardian

https://www.scribd.com/document/432470725/Expert-Panel-examining-opportunities-for-further-abatement

BACKGROUND

The Sydney Morning Herald, 28 October 2019:

Australia's carbon emissions appear to have edged higher in the final quarter of the 2018-19 financial year, delaying the downward trajectory the nation needs in order to hit the country's Paris climate goals.

National emissions are projected to have reached 134.6 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (Mt CO2-e) in April-June 2019, according to Ndevr Environmental Consultants, an environmental auditing company with a track record of accurately estimating the nation's emissions.

That total would come in about 900,000 tonnes of CO2-e more than for the previous three months, Ndevr said in a report based on public data and sector estimates. The tally would be less - by a similar amount - than the fourth quarter of 2017-18.

For the whole year, emissions were modestly higher than for previous 12 months, marking three consecutive years of increases. Excluding land-use changes - such as deforestation or tree planting - annual emissions have risen for the five years since the Abbott government scrapped the carbon price in 2014…..

This is the man Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison admires because of his trade policies

Almost everyone could see this coming except US President Donald Trump and he had been repeatedly warned that his imposition of tariffs, using anti-globalisation sentiment as an excuse, would spring back and hit American manufacturing where it hurts.

Almost everyone – but not Australian Prime Minister and Liberal MP for Cook Scott Morrison who on 17 September 2018 was quoted thus:

Spruiking the kind of populist credentials that swept Trump to power, Morrison said many people in both the US and Australia feel left behind by the powerful economic forces of globalisation, which have brought massive wealth to some but left others feeling poorer and disenfranchised.

“That’s what we get. The president gets that. I get it,” the prime minister told the Times columnist Maureen Dowd.

Morrison described Trump as “very practical” and as someone “who’s not going to waste a day”.

“I like that about him. I like that about him a lot, actually.’’

Here is that oh so “very practical” Donald Trump this week.

The Sydney Morning Herald, 27 November 2018:

On Monday local time, the iconic carmaker announced it would close assembly plants in Ohio, Michigan, Maryland and in the Canadian province of Ontario. The cuts amount to almost 15 per cent of the General Motors workforce.

A big part of Trump's appeal in the so-called "rust belt" in the midwest was his promise to bring back stable and well-paying manufacturing jobs, especially in the auto industry. The General Motors plant at Lordstown, Ohio, is located in a county that recorded a 29 percentage point swing towards Trump at the 2016 election.

So before heading to Mississipi for a campaign rally, Trump said he had expressed his displeasure to General Motors Chief Executive Mary Barra.

"I was very tough," Trump said. "I spoke with her and I said, 'This country has done a lot for General Motors – you'd better get back in there soon.' That's Ohio.

"They say the Chevy Cruze is not selling well. I say, 'Well get a car that is selling well and put it back in' ... I'm not happy about it."

Trump said he expected General Motors to start manufacturing another type of car in Ohio and that it "had better" do so.

In an interview with The Wall Street Journal on Monday, Trump said he told General Motors: "You’re playing around with the wrong person."

Trump will this week travel to Argentina for G20 meetings, where he will hold a highly-anticipated meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping focussed on trade.

At the height of the Global Financial Crisis, General Motors received a government bailout that eventually cost US taxpayers $US11.2 billion ($15.5 billion in today's money).

But the President has slapped a 25 per cent tariff on imported steel from China, which automakers said has already increased commodity costs, and threatened more including on auto parts. Car manufacturers said earlier in the year that tariffs could bring job losses.

Trump has since boasted about a renaissance in the industry thanks to his tax cuts and the removal of environmental regulations put in place by his Democratic predecessor Barack Obama.

In a tweet about Michigan in August he said: "Lots of car and other companies moving back!"

In 2017 he said high-quality manufacturing jobs were no longer leaving Ohio.

"They’re all coming back," he said at a rally in the state. "Don’t move. Don’t sell your house."

Australia’s Trump Lite is overseas seeing what other trade opportunities he can wreck

The Australian, 13 November 2018, p.2:

Scott Morrison has mounted the strongest defence of any allied leader so far of Donald Trump’s trade policies, denying that Washington has turned protectionist because of its imposition of tariffs on China.

“The US wants to see greater trade and more open trade and they want to see it on better terms,” the Prime Minister told The Australian in an interview in his Sydney office. “It is yet to be established that the US is pursuing a protectionist policy.” 

Mr Morrison said he did not agree with the protectionist ­interpretation of the administration’s trade policy.

Mr Morrison leaves today on a trip to Singapore and Papua New Guinea for APEC and ASEAN-related summits, during which he will meet US Vice-President Mike Pence, Chinese President Xi Jinping, Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and a range of regional leaders.

He gave a distinctive reading of US trade policy.

“If I could summarise US policy, it is that what they’ve been doing until now has not produced that (freer trade) so there should not be an expectation that they’ll continue to do things the way they have been.” But Mr Morrison makes a controversial judgment: “That doesn’t mean their objective has changed — their objective being a more open, freer trading system around the world, with a rules-based order, and everybody ­respecting those rules and those rules not being stacked against any one group.

“They have particular views about how things affect them, then there are other issues around intellectual property and so on where we have said there are some real issues here and things that need to be resolved.” Stressing that it was too early to conclude that the US had made a long-term switch to protectionism, he said: “You can only judge it on the results, not the rhetoric, so let’s see.” Mr Morrison cited the trade deals the Trump administration had done with Canada and Mex­ico and said many commentators saw early Trump trade moves against those nations as indicating long-term protectionism, but the result was new trade deals.

Mr Morrison also stressed that his government was not taking a position for or against the US or China in their trade dispute: “We’re not really judging either party in this because we trade with both and we’ve been successful (with both), whether it’s staying clear of US tariffs on steel and aluminium or with China, which is our biggest trading partner.

“We maintain a pragmatic ­balance.” This is Mr Morrison’s first Asian summit season, but soon after the APEC and East Asia summits he will attend a G20 summit, where he will meet the US President.

Early yesterday, in an interview with David Speers on Sky TV, he slightly misstated government policy when he said definitively that territory in the South China Sea was not Chinese territory.

He cleared this up in a series of later interviews, confirming that Canberra does not take a position on the merits of respective nations’ claims to territory in the South China Sea……

BACKGROUND

Crikey, 12 November 2018:

Morrison’s “stop asking questions from the Labor Party” diktat to the ABC has taken Australia one step closer to a political discourse dominated by Trumpian semiotics of “fake news” and “enemies of the people”.

Like Trump, Morrison’s aim was to undermine the media — and particularly the ABC — in the minds of that mythical creature, the Liberal Party base, and help out News Corp on the way through.

It came in the same week that Trump ramped-up his own war on journalists: revoking White House clearance from CNN’s Jim Acosta, dismissing another reporter’s “stupid questions” and calling a third a “loser”.

For a journalist, Morrison’s insult is greater. Trump’s name-calling is straight out of the primary school playground; Morrison’s crack goes to the heart of personal and craft integrity…..

The “journalist as enemy of the people” trope is perhaps the most institutionally damaging part of Trumpian semiotics adopted by Morrison. But it’s not the only one.

He seems to be aiming for the Trump look, too. There’s the now-ubiquitous base-ball cap, with Australian branding substituting “Make America Great Again”. There’s the single thumbs-up to say “we’re in this together” to go along with the trademark Trump two handed thumbs-up.

The social media of choice — multi-platform video snippets — similarly taunt with a “laugh-at-me or laugh-with-me, but notice me” Trump sensibility.

His prime ministerial speech patterns reflect both the Trumpian blather of his opening press statement (“a fair go for those who have a go”) interspersed with the cut-through insults: “Bill Shorten is union bred, union fed, union led.” Morrison’s insults do have somewhat more political content than the personalised “Lyin Ted”, and “Little Marco” that Trump pulled out during the 2016 election. 

Policy commitments tend to be the same vague generalities (“we’re gonna fix this”) and he uses the same thought bubble technique (Jerusalem, anyone?) to focus the debate on him, for good or ill.

Meanwhile, Trump has shown he’s willing to learn from Australia, as he famously suggested in his “you’re worse than I am” compliment to Turnbull. The “migrant caravan” that dominated right-wing discourse in the lead-up to the US mid-terms would have chimed in Australian minds with the familiar sound:  Tampa, Manus, Nauru.

The world is running out of patience with Australia: Europe warns Morrison Government

Europe has strongly signalled that the Morrison Coalition Government needs to stop pretending it has a national climate change policy and keep the pledge to cut greenhouse gas emissions made under the November 2016 U.N. Paris Agreement which the Australian Government ratified and, on the government's part contained such a pitifully weak commitment to a 2030 abatement target i.e. emissions reduced by 26 to 28 per cent below 2005 levels. 

The Sydney Morning Herald, 31 August 2018:

The Coalition's internal climate war risks damaging the economy after Europe declared it would reject a $15 billion trade deal with Australia unless the Morrison government keeps its pledge to cut pollution under the Paris accord.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison this week reset his government’s course on energy policy, declaring a focus on lowering electricity bills and increasing reliability, while relegating efforts to cut dangerous greenhouse gas emissions.

He has reaffirmed his government’s commitment to the Paris accord despite persistent calls by conservative Coalition MPs, led by Tony Abbott, to quit the agreement.

However there is deep uncertainty over how Australia will meet the Paris goal of reducing Australia’s carbon emissions by 26 per cent by 2030 given the government does not have a national strategy to meet the target.

The policy ructions did not go unnoticed at a meeting of the European Parliament's Committee on International Trade in Brussels, where the EU’s chief negotiator on the deal, Helena König, faced angry questions from the floor over Australia’s commitment to climate action.

Australia and the EU will in November enter a second round of negotiations over the deal that would end restrictions on Australian exports and collectively add $15 billion to both economies.

In a video of this week's proceedings, Ms König told the committee that “it’s the [European] Commission’s position ... that we are talking about respect and full implementation of the Paris agreement [as part of the trade deal]”.

“No doubt we will see what comes out in the text [of the deal agreement] but that I expect to be the minimum in the text, for sure.”

Her assertion is a clear signal that any failure by Australia to meet its international climate obligations would have serious economic consequences.

Ms König fired off the warning after a question by Klaus Buchner, a German Greens member of the Parliament who said “the intention of the new Australian regime to withdraw from the Paris Agreement unsettles not only Australians”.

“Australia is by far the biggest exporter of coal in the world ... what will the commission do when Australia does indeed withdraw from the Paris agreement? Is this a red line for us in these discussions or do we just accept it?

“I believe as the largest trading block in the world we have a responsibility to go beyond pure profits.”

Tweet of the Week

Australia’s exemption from US steel & aluminium tariffs will be about a beneficial as exempting Pitt Street Mall from hot weather when Sydney is 40 degrees. Largely meaningless lip service. If global trade is dislocated, it will hurt Australia. HARD.

— Stephen Koukoulas (@TheKouk) March 10, 2018

Of Gas and Hot Air

Energy security became a major political issue following a storm-induced blackout in South Australia late last year.  Instead of the massive storm which knocked over the transmission towers being the “villain”, the Prime Minister and his Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg  blamed the state’s level of renewable (wind) energy for the outage. They have persisted with this version of events regardless of all the evidence to the contrary.

In the months since then politicians and others have had a great deal to say about the national energy grid and its shortcomings and renewables and base-load power.  Ideology has played a very significant part in the statements of many politicians. This of course means that truth has often been twisted or completely ignored. 

Recently the focus has been on gas and a predicted gas shortage.

Despite the claims of the Government and many industry players, there is no general gas shortage.  There is, however, a looming domestic shortage because most of the enormous volume of gas being extracted is being exported. 

The Federal Government has rather belatedly recognised that, despite the fact that Australia will soon be the largest gas-exporting country in the world, there will be a shortage of gas for the domestic market.  Moreover, the Government has realised that domestic consumers are paying more for gas than consumers of Australian gas in Japan - even after the cost of processing and transporting of the resource to that country. This has become a rather urgent matter for the Government because domestic gas prices and the uncertainty of supply is hurting local industries.  For a government that talks about jobs and growth, permitting more of our dwindling manufacturing base going either “down the gurgler” or offshore would be politically foolish.

As the Prime Minister’s meetings in recent months with the major gas exporters have not produced the cooperation he hoped for, he recently decided to take further action.  It is action that the industry is unhappy about saying that this will discourage global investment, a claim which is unsubstantiated. There are others, including some in the Government, who believe that this interference in the market is not justified.

What happens elsewhere?  Western Australia, the one Australian state which had the forethought to realise that there was a need to protect local interests, has a gas reservation policy[1]. Many other countries, including Canada, the USA, Israel, Indonesia and Egypt, have various mechanisms to ensure that they won’t end up in the situation that Australia is heading towards.  In their rush to encourage foreign investment, successive Australian Federal Governments failed to see that safeguards to protect domestic gas supplies were needed in the national interest.

Prime Minister Turnbull has stated that his measures will only be needed for the short term because he expects that there will be further development of local gasfields which can service the domestic market. He is referring specifically to NSW and Victoria which have currently stopped unconventional gas mining. (There is an exception in NSW.  Santos’ project in the Pilliga in the north-west is currently going through the planning approval process.)

The Prime Minister is one of many politicians and industry players who have weighed in wanting the opening up of NSW and Victoria to coal seam and unconventional gas mining. 

Recently Ian Macfarlane, the head of the Queensland Resources Council, and a former federal Coalition Minister, criticised the NSW and Victorian Governments for lacking the will to develop their gas resources in the same way that Queensland has.[2] 

What Macfarlane either does not understand or conveniently ignores is that it is what happened in Queensland as well as overseas in the USA and elsewhere that alarmed communities in NSW and Victoria and generated the campaigns against CSG and unconventional gas mining – campaigns that have gathered strength also in the Northern Territory and the north-west of Western Australia. 

In his interview with Leigh Sales on ABC TV’s 7.30 on April 27 Macfarlane paints a very rosy picture of the industry in Queensland [3]. He claims “irresponsible green activism” stopped the industry in NSW.   Blaming the anti-gas campaign on the “greenie” bogey is convenient for many conservatives but is far from a true reflection of the breadth of community opposition to an invasive and polluting industry.

It will be interesting to see whether the urging of the Federal Government and proponents like Macfarlane encourage the NSW and Victorian Governments to change their positions on gas mining. If this happens, the reaction from those who see the industry as an unacceptable threat to agriculture and the environment is easy to predict.

Hildegard

Northern Rivers         

5 May 2017

[1] http://www.dsd.wa.gov.au/what-we-do/advise-on-economic-policy/domestic-gas-policy

[2] http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2017/s4660142.htm

[3] Ibid.

GuestSpeak is a feature of North Coast Voices allowing Northern Rivers residents to make satirical or serious comment on issues that concern them. Posts of 250-300 words or less can be submitted to ncvguestspeak AT gmail.com.au for consideration. Longer posts will be considered on topical subjects.

Just the sheer size and reach of the Trump Organisation's business interests has implications for U.S. foreign policy

For the last eighteen months in particular there has been media comment on the extensive business interests of U.S. president-elect Donald John Trump.

Since the November 2016 presidential election focus has intensified.

However, the U.S. Constitution drawn up in a simpler century teflon coats presidents - never having envisioned the likes of  Donald Trump.

The reach of Trump’s business interests are said to reach as far as Australia.

Given the man doesn’t seem to understand that the only ethical course would be to divest himself entirely of his business interests by placing them in a genuine blind trust not run by family members, close friends or business partners, so that both America and the world can have a measure of confidence in the his decision making as president, one can only look aghast at the potential for these business interests to fatally infect his presidency and U.S. foreign policy.

In July 2015 Donald Trump disclosed 515 U.S. and foreign corporations or partnerships in which he was either president, partner, chair, director, secretary, member and/or shareholder.

Forbes, 17 August 2015:

Under “Our Hotels” on the Trump Hotel Collection website, it lists six domestic hotels and six international hotels…..

The other hotels abroad are in Toronto, Doonbeg, Ireland, Vancouver, and Baku, Azerbaijan. (Toronto and Vancouver also have a Trump Tower.)

On the website for the Trump Real Estate Collection, nine international properties are listed, including two Trump Towers in India and one in Istanbul, another in Uruguay and another in the Philippines, as well as a Trump World in South Korea, among others.

Donald Trump has an interest in more than 30 U.S. properties, roughly half of which have debt on them according to The New York Times on 20 August 2016:

Debt on properties Mr. Trump owns or leases

PROPERTY	LOCATION	DEBT OUTSTANDING
40 Wall Street	Manhattan	157,400,000
Trump International Hotel*	Washington	127,000,000
Trump National Doral golf resort	Miami	125,000,000
Trump Tower	Manhattan	100,000,000
Trump International Hotel	Chicago	45,000,000
167 East 61st Street	Manhattan	14,500,000
Trump Park Avenue	Manhattan	12,495,000
Trump National Golf Club	Colts Neck, N.J.	11,700,000
4-8 East 57th Street "Niketown"	Manhattan	10,600,000
Seven Springs estate	Mount Kisco, N.Y.	8,000,000
Trump National Golf Club Washington	Potomac Falls, Va.	7,600,000
Trump International Hotel and Tower	Manhattan	7,000,000
Trump International Hotel**	Las Vegas	3,200,000
1094 South Ocean Boulevard	Palm Beach, Fla.	250,000
124 Woodbridge Road	Palm Beach, Fla.	250,000

*This construction loan was for $170 million. The Trump Organization and Times sources confirm roughly $127 million has been drawn down on.
**This loan was worth $110 million in 2010. The Trump Organization says a Trump entity is responsible for $3.2 million of the debt outstanding. The Times could not confirm this.

Debt associated with Mr. Trump's limited partnerships/investments

PROPERTY	LOCATION	PRC  OWNED	DEBT OUTSTANDING
1290 Avenue of the Americas	Manhattan	30	950,000,000
555 California Street	San Francisco	30	589,000,000
Starrett City / Spring Creek Towers	Brooklyn	4	410,000,000

Other:

An internal Trump Organization corporate loan, which Mr. Trump says is worth more than $50 million.

Sources: RedVision Systems, Securities and Exchange Commission, New York Times, Bloomberg data, Trump Organization.

The New York Times compiled these debt estimates using bank documents, public filings and through interviews with the Trump Organization and people familiar with the debt who asked not to be identified because they were not authorized to speak on the record about it.

The bulk of these liabilities appear to consist of mortgages maturing between 2016 and 2029.

The Washington Post, 16 September 2016:

U.S. Customs and Border Protection records, compiled by ImportGenius.com since 2007, give us a look at what has been imported by many of the businesses that are owned by Trump or use his name via licensing deals.

Trump has imported from the countries coloured red and many of the products bearing Donald Trump’s name appear to come from low-wage countries in East Asia.

Vodka

Trump licensed his name to the Israeli vodka after a 2011 legal battle. Unlike the original Trump vodka made in Holland, the new version was popular as one of the few liquors that’s kosher for Passover.

Barware

Made by a crystal company in a small town in Slovenia, its first entry into the U.S. market.

Ties

Made in countries such as China and sold on Amazon.com in nearly 200 patterns and sizes.

Mirrors

Made in China.

Accessories

Including cuff links, belts and eyeglasses made in China and other countries.

Fragrance

Trump’s cologne has been manufactured in and out of the United States.

Clothing

Trump makes his clothing line abroad. The manufacturers are generally scattered throughout East Asia and Central America.

Chandeliers and lamps

Some of these products retail for more than $4,000. Made in China.

Furniture

Trump Home sells furniture to consumers made in Germany and Turkey, but his own hotels often get furniture from massive distributors such as the multinational IHS Global Alliance.