Strip out the political rhetoric and Trump edges it

 

First published in the www.suffolkfreepress.co.uk & www.dissexpress.co.uk Thursday, September 10, 2020.

Most readers of this newspaper would have heard the sporting phrase: “play the ball, not the (wo)man.”

For me that means looking at issues from a Libertarian perspective about the implications of policies and not the character of the policymaker.

The US Presidential election campaign has been rightly given a lot of prominence recently across many UK news outlets. Will Trump’s Republican elephant crush his Democratic opponent’s plucky little donkey? Or vice versa.

To be fair, neither of the main candidates for US President, the incumbent Donald Trump and the Democratic nominee, Joe Biden, are especially wholesome characters.

The first seems to be needlessly rude and abrasive in his use of language, whilst the other is a stiff, grey, establishment insider who seems to constantly change positions on key issues like the Vicar of Bray.

I have no particular liking of either of them at a personal level.

But with the Presidential Elections only two months away, which outcome would be in the best interests of the personal, social, and economic freedoms which all Libertarians like me hold dear?

The greatest immediate threat to all of these is armed conflict. Unlike all of its immediate predecessors, in fact going back 40-years to President Carter, the Trump administration has avoided the temptation to send US troops into action in new theatres of war.

Equally, Trump seems more willing than President Obama, who so loved using drones to hit US-specified targets, to stay his hand in tactical military stand-offs. Think of his decision to rescind an order to launch an attack on Iran in 2018 and again at the start of this year.

Joe Biden was, of course, the vice president in the Obama administration and showed no resistance to his boss’ big state military adventurism.

Moreover, Trump, in his usual idiosyncratic manner, has effectively engaged with the totalitarian North Korean regime in a manner not conceived of by any other presidents since the creation of the so-called ‘hermit kingdom’. Whilst a treaty between the two countries is still some way away, the prospects for peace in that part of Asia are better than ever.

Trump’s international trade policies do perplex me. As a believer in free trade, with zero or only minimal tariffs, I am worried about the emerging trade war between the US and its main trading partner, China.

That said, I do agree that it was time to reset the clock in terms of the unfair trading practices of the latter, not least in terms of the country’s blatant disregard for others’ copyright and intellectual property.

The Trump administration places a great deal of emphasis on supporting bilateral trade deals between nations – and there is much to commend that. The Administration scored a major success last month in its role as the broker in the historic Israel-UAE trade deal.

The prospects of a US-UK trade deal remain and I’m hopeful that such an agreement will boost economic activity here and in the US ….. but when?

Domestically, the Trump administration has seen a reduction in the budget and scope of many bloated federal agencies, giving increased choice back to individuals and communities as to how they live their lives.

Whilst, COVID-19 has hit parts of the country very hard, the dynamism of the people, unencumbered by slow-moving Government agencies, has been shown in thousands of local self-help and community-support initiatives.

By contrast, Joe Biden’s party has been moving to the socialist Left for years now. Many Libertarians naturally recoil from intervention-heavy Democratic policies on guns, healthcare, education, and the economy.

That said, the Trump administration has also, especially in this feverish election year, shown an alarming recourse to authoritarian methods: everything from the heavy-handed federal policing of some cities to increased use of Government surveillance of individuals.

Whilst some of this has been the work of state or city-level agencies, there is no doubt that Mr Trump’s unhelpful rhetoric has created a new licence for the state to get involved where, in short, it has no business to be.

So, Trump or not Trump?

As you can tell. This is not a clear-cut issue for me. But, on balance – just, a second Trump administration, stripped of its authoritarian political rhetoric, would be preferable to the big state beliefs of his opponent.

Ends.