Winston’s Next Job

Written By: - Date published: 8:30 am, January 10th, 2025 - 10 comments
Categories: Donald Trump, International, us politics, winston peters - Tags:

While he scoops up behind Minister Willis’s Cook Strait ferry disaster, he’s Minister of Foreign Affairs and our primary lead on the rise of President Trump and boy does he have a job ahead of him.

The United States is accelerating its massive disengagement with most of the world, and yet still accreting power. If we followed the Acemoglu+Robinson recipe that successful states require strong and flexible institutions that regulate change and promote strength, the USA should be a rapidly declining state. Yet the USA remains the Numero Uno economic, political, and military power in the world.

Domestically it’s a mess. Two-thirds of Americans believe the country is on the wrong track, and nearly 70 percent rate the economy as “not good” or “poor.” A 2024 survey found that about 800,000 people were living in shelters. Love of country is fading,  with only 38 percent of Americans now saying patriotism is “very important” to them, down from 70 percent in 2000. Congressional polarization has reached its highest point since Reconstruction, and threats of violence against politicians have surged. Former U.S. President Donald Trump won 2024 the popular vote even though many Americans believe he’s a fascist. He’s the wildest ride they’ve had since Lincoln. Its public finances are beset by massive debt, and its sharemarkets are subject to almighty crises at least once a decade that are mostly self-inflicted. 

But it’s Power Number One across the world. The country’s share of global wealth is about as large as it was in the 1990s, and its grip on global arteries — energy, finance, markets, and technology — has strengthened. Internationally, the United States is gaining allies, whereas its main adversaries, China and Russia, are increasingly embattled. Inflation, massive debt, and sluggish productivity remain serious concerns, but they pale in comparison to the economic and demographic headwinds facing other great powers.

This is the paradox of American power: the United States is a divided country, perpetually perceived as in decline, yet it consistently remains the wealthiest and most powerful state in the world and increasingly actively ensures that competitors are left behind.

It’s the world’s largest economy by nominal GDP, second in purchasing power parity, and recovered from COVID-19 faster and better than any other developed economy. It added half a million more jobs in the third quarter of 2024 alone.

We’ll know shortly what spectrum of isolationist or expansionist President Trump will be, but he’s already making it clear that his country is number one in the world in money and might. New Zealand has no need to get further in between the trade interplay of the USA and China, but we will most certainly be asked more bluntly than the previous Biden administration who our most important ally really is.

A new article in The Diplomat outlines that Peters has very little room to manoeuvre through this in 2025, but he has to help us land one way or other on AUKUS2 – if indeed that initiative survives the next Secretary of State and Pentagon Chief.

I suspect that this degree of instability and swagger will actually draw New Zealand further towards even greater strategic alignment with Australia – no matter who is running the government here. We’re just too small to survive this on our own in any form.

But with Labour ruling out membership of AUKUS late last year, there needs to be ever-more strengthened formal mechanisms between New Zealand and Australia to keep us secure and prosperous into the future.

If age and will are still there, that, together with our redoubtable U.S. Ambassador Banks, is Winston’s next job.

10 comments on “Winston’s Next Job ”

  1. kejo 1
    10 January 2025 at 8:43 am

    What if we just chuck the declining Western Alliance over and join the rising Brics crowd. Meet Trumps radicalism with a bit of our own. Sounds tongue in cheek I know but theres some seriousness in that too. Cheers

    Reply
    • Ad 1.1
      10 January 2025 at 10:23 am

      It's weird that Trump is a massive Overton Window for countries small and large, left-leaning as well as right.

      With Labour's stance ruling out AUKUS, and NZF clearly uncomfortable with it, there's room for us to move as well.

      Reply
    • Populuxe 1.2
      10 January 2025 at 5:43 pm

      I'm really not seeing how aligning ourselves with a bunch of economic basketcases and two countries, Russia and China, who equal or surpass the US in human rights abuses, one of which is currently losing an atrocious war of invasion in Europe, is supposed to be an improvement?

      Reply
  2. Daverave 2
    10 January 2025 at 10:23 am

    Trump won by 1) changing the Republican Party from a foreign policy pro war dominated party to one focused on the American’s who have lost jobs as manufacturing was exported to China. 2) focusing on economy and not war; wealth creation rather than the Democrat’s liberal focus on DEI, Gender issues, Queer issues, Race issues, Environmental extremist issues.
    The failure of progressive woke left; viz, Arden, Trudeau in Canada, Starmer in the UK, Albanese in Australia , add Germany etc, proves most progressive operate in an echo chamber where the majority of normal peps have no connection or relevance.

    To reinvent itself, NZ labour should ditch the communist greens, ditch anti business TPM and go back to the roots of their beginnings; building honest prosperity for the hard working middle class.

    Reply
    • weka 2.1
      10 January 2025 at 10:30 am

      "communist greens". Either you are politically ignorant and don't know communism is or what the GP is, or you're using lazy RW propaganda tropes. Either way, please read the Policy and up your commenting game.

      Reply
      • Kat 2.1.1
        10 January 2025 at 3:00 pm

        Unfortunately 'Daverave' and his views mirror a fair proportion of voters who put the current abysmal Coalition on the govt benches. Asking him to up his game is akin to asking a bear to stop pooping in the woods.

        An excerpt from The Whitehouse records:

        The fact that the current Democratic/Biden administration has led the US to the strongest jobs recovery on record and the strongest economic recovery in the world, driving unemployment below 4% for 28 months – the longest stretch in over 50 years – and creating nearly 16 million jobs since President Biden took office. The Democrat administration also spurred the largest investments in fighting crime, preventing violence, and investing in public safety in history. Thanks to this funding to help states, cities, towns, and counties across the country, 2023 saw one of the lowest rates of violent crime in over 50 years. The murder rate saw its sharpest decrease in history.

        Then there is the largest small business boom in history, with a record nearly 20 million new business applications over the past three years – 55% higher than the year before the pandemic, the lowest child poverty rate in American history, thanks in part to the expansion of the Child Tax Credit, and funded a historic vaccination campaign which led to the full vaccinations of 230 million Americans.

        Biden is regarded as most Pro-Labor President in US History.

        Reply
  3. Tiger Mountain 3
    10 January 2025 at 10:24 am

    Heh, it is known as capital and finance capital Ad dear boy…that is what keeps the yankee devil top layer grinding along on their destructive path.

    BRICS composite nations may have various unsavoury characteristics, however they are an increasingly effective opposition to US/EU Imperialism. A new international non aligned movement would be great for Aotearoa NZ imo.

    Reply
  4. Stephen D 4
    10 January 2025 at 10:52 am

    One of Winston’s next jobs is to make sure NZ1 gets some seats at the election.
    Jones certainly isn’t capable, which leaves Winnie still the leader. Look for major disagreements with coalition colleagues over ferries and rail. The Regulations bill will be another bone of contention. Especially given NZ1’s nationalistic tendencies.

    Reply
    • tc 4.1
      10 January 2025 at 3:54 pm

      He could blow up the coalition and cause an early election.

      If so he better pray no one holds him to account for watching willis trash the ferry deal he signed and the costly delays that now carries……costs they're clueless about still.

      Reply

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