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This week, the Joe Biden appointees at the embassy didn’t hold a party. Senior ministers, politicians, media and VIP guests instead flocked to an excellent bash held by Sky (Hanover’s clients) – where the tightness of the final polls dictated a more realistic mood.
I thought of the extreme emotions of November 2016 when I was asked to join a panel webinar session on Wednesday hosted and moderated by Hanover’s President and Managing Partner Gavin Megaw entitled: What the US Election Results Mean for Business.
I was joining an expert line-up for this latest event in Hanover’s series ‘The World Rewired’: Jennifer Lind, Associate Professor of Government at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire and US foreign policy expert; Brian Hayes, former MEP and vice-president of the European Parliament’s economic and monetary affairs committee; and John Parisella, former chief of staff to Quebec premiers and leading political analyst.
Much of the hour-long discussion focussed on the key calculation currently occupying the minds of politicians, armed forces, business leaders and commentators around the world: Trump will say a lot of extreme things and make sweeping threats – but how much of it will he actually do?
On trade, for example, where his populist protectionism has already shifted the global dial, will he really impose 60 per cent tariffs on Chinese imports and mark-ups of between 10 and 20 per cent of goods coming from elsewhere? Hayes thought a serious battle of the blocs, involving the EU, was a distinct possibility, while Lind spoke of a ‘new Cold War’ with increasingly competitive economic statecraft and expanding export control.
Parisella noted that if Trump had one defining characteristic it was that he is transactional. I chipped in with the prediction that Keir Starmer risked becoming the leader of an ‘orphan’ nation, marooned outside the EU, and would soon face the key strategic choice of having either to get closer to Trump or to Europe – with attendant risks on either side.
Panellists agreed that NATO faced a harsh renewed reality of not being able fully to rely on the US as the world’s policeman – with high risks for Ukraine and the Middle East, not to mention Taiwan. European nations faced having to boost defence spending and co-operate more closely on security, Hayes said, with Parisella adding Canada needed urgently to review its strategic outlook. Lind said the position taken by Vice President-elect JD Vance, and Trump’s choice of his own foreign policy advisers, was crucial.
Picking winners
The panel was asked who the winners from Trump’s political comeback were, apart from tycoons such as Elon Musk and cronies such as Nigel Farage. Vladimir Putin, and autocratic ‘strongman’ leaders, were cited, as were political journalists thriving on Trump’s thirst for controversial headlines as well as social media opinion formers and podcasters – not necessarily all from the New Right. Panellists thought that those with pensions would do better in the long run, while the crypto industry (a Trump favourite) is set for another big boost.
One thought that occurred to me, inconveniently just after we wrapped up, was that another possible winner, if only in his own mind, was another blond bombastic politician who had been ejected from the highest political job in his own country but who might even now be plotting a Trumpian comeback. Boris Johnson 2.0 anybody? I bet he, and some of his newly defeated party, are at least thinking about it.