Comment: Donald Trump may have swung 3 national elections in 1 week, S'pore included

Donald Trump has won three elections in one week.

If you said on Nov. 4, 2024, that the Liberal Party of Canada, the Labor Party of Australia, and the People's Action Party of Singapore would all not only win their elections but put their opposition to the sword, you would have been laughed out of the room.

The Liberal Party was trailing their opponents by 20 per cent, the Labor Party was in a dicey position, and the PAP was… well, it was doing fine, but many thought a lowered vote share and maybe a few more lost seats were on the cards for an imminent general election.

But something changed.

Tariff-ic

Trump was elected in Nov. 2024.

There is an old saying about Donald Trump: take him seriously, not literally. Or was it the other way around?

But Trump spent his entire presidential campaign railing against the U.S.'s allies and threatening them with a tariff regime never before seen.

People did not take him seriously.

Some believed that the tariffs would top out at 10 to 15 per cent, harsh but survivable.

And to be fair to those people, that's where they are now… if Trump continues to back down. But it's not the tariffs that are the problem; it's the uncertainty.

As expected, Trump came to power and almost immediately began to put pressure on China.

However, less expected was the pressure he put on Canada and Mexico, the U.S. neighbours, closest allies, and largest trading partners, subjecting them to 20 per cent tariffs despite an existing trade deal in place (which his own Administration negotiated in his first term).

Trump then doubled down, placing eye-watering tariffs on the rest of the world, including a baseline 10 per cent tariff that applied to Australia and Singapore and over 200 per cent tariffs on China, which is Australia and Singapore's largest trading partner.

The End of the World

If you manage to get Australia, Canada, Singapore, and the United Kingdom to all, almost simultaneously, declare that the old world order was basically dead and that the U.S. was taking actions that were "not that of a friend", something momentous has occurred.

It's a bit too early to know whether Trump has messed up, because it's not entirely clear what he sees as his goals.

However, it's clear that Trump does not value the traditional role that the U.S. played in the world as the defender of the global order and promoter of free trade.

The question is, now, what does the rest of the world do about it?

This week we begin to see the shape of a reply.

Maple Fury

Canada's new prime minister, Mark Carney, led a Liberal party that most thought was all but dead.

At the beginning of the year, the party was running fourth in polls, behind conservative and progressive parties.

However, with the onset of Trump's tariffs against Canada, and his many, many remarks that he would like Canada to become part of the U.S. as its "51st state", outgoing PM Justin Trudeau and Carney were able to position their party as the natural guardians of Canada's sovereignty.

It tapped into a mood that saw Canadian store shelves empty of U.S. goods as Canadians embraced an unprecedented boycott of American goods.

The Liberals faced off against a Conservative party that had until recently tried to reshape itself as a Canadian version of Trump's small government, anti-woke, arch-conservative Republican party.

However, that position cost them dearly as the tide changed faster than a tsunami, resulting in an embarrassing 24-seat deficit to the Liberals on Apr. 28.

For context, six months before the election, the incumbents were expected to place fourth.

More embarrassing is that the Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre was himself swept away in the tide, losing his seat to Liberal candidate Bruce Fanjoy.

Lesser known to those outside of Canada is that Carney managed to decapitate not one but two opposition parties in his victory, with the leader of the left-leaning New Democrats party leader, Jagmeet Singh, also losing his seat.

It arguably demonstrated that this wasn't just a backlash of liberals against conservatives, it was specifically the "safe pair of hands" that Canadians voted for, with Carney's economic and financial experience in their minds.

Kangery

Australia saw its own opposition decapitation, with the Liberal party losing its leader, Peter Dutton.

Here we have to mention that Australia's Liberals have no relation to the victorious Canadian Liberals.

Due to a quirk of history, the Liberal Party in Australia is ideologically conservative, and some may say right-wing.

Dutton had also attempted a rebrand of his party to align more closely with what seemed to be a rising Trumpian tide.

Australia went to the polls on the same day as Singapore, and while results are still being confirmed, the Conservatives look to have been comprehensively thumped.

The Labor government was not in as dire straits as the Canadian Liberals, but they were in choppy waters, and polling indicated that there was a chance that they could lose their majority.

When the tide changed, the Australian Liberals, particularly Dutton, tried to distance themselves from their Trumpian elements, but to no avail.

One of the memes of the election was Dutton visibly cringing as a fellow candidate loudly proclaimed, "Make Australia Great Again", an echo of Trump's famous slogan, clearly not reading the room about how Trump's economic policies had soured the whole package.

Dutton would lose the election and, like Poiliver, his seat, in a bruising loss that saw Labor increase their majority.

Polls closed at 6 pm in Australia, and a scant two and a half hours later, ABC was able to confirm that Labor had secured its majority.

Results are still coming in, so its unclear just how well Labor did, but its clear that a majority of Australians were swayed by their strong stance against Trump's actions.

Otterly comprehensive

And finally, Singapore.

Singapore did not see an opposition leader lose a seat, in fact, no opposition lost their seats (except the NCMPs).

But then again, the Workers' Party didn't try to push some version of "Make Singapore Great Again".

Someone else did though, and ended up losing his deposit.

Prime Minister Lawrence Wong, leading the PAP into elections for the first time, reiterated time and time again that the fundamental fabric of the world had changed.

He pointed out that Singapore had prospered by weaving itself into that global fabric, making itself a useful, almost vital, thread in that weave.

If that fabric was unravelling, it would need a "clear and strong mandate to govern", as Prime Minister Lawrence Wong said at his post-election press conference, and the electorate responded.

But it did not do so blindly.

The WP didn't reject the warning but argued that the antidote to the ailment was diversity in parliament; the electorate confidently returned them to parliament.

WP managed to hold all its seats, while increasing its vote share in Sengkang GRC. They also ran the PAP close in several seats.

But where parties had accused the government of "fearmongering" over the Trump Tariffs and trade war, they appear to have been punished.

Weave

With tongue firmly in cheek, I say that Trump has won three elections this week.

But it is not entirely untruthful.

His policies have set the stage for a reversal of fortune for three sets of incumbents, to varying degrees.

The three countries, all members of the mega-regional Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement of Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal, all campaigned loudly and clearly against the results of Trump's policy.

These countries have given their governments mandates to preserve as much of the fabric of the old world as they can and to knit together a new one.

Top image via Lawrence Wong/Facebook, Anthony Albanese/Facebook, Mark Carney/Facebook & Donald Trump/Facebook