CLANCY OVERELL | Editor | CONTACT
President Trump has this week followed the lead of Australia’s Federal Opposition Leader, Peter Dutton MP, by back flipping on political position that he had previously refused to negotiate.
Unlike the strongmen leaders of history that both Trump and Dutton are trying to emulate with their populist right-wing politics, it seems that neither of them have the mettle to follow through with their wildly unpopular decisions.
With both of these leaders forced to back flip on their key policies in the last week, it is now unclear if they are strongmen at all.
For months Peter Dutton has been wearing the nickname ‘Temu Trump’ – a nod to his cheap imitation of US Republican politics.
However, it now seems that Trump might actually be copying Dutton, as the US President Donald Trump backflips on the sweeping tariffs that he has spent the last two months talking about nonstop.
Trump has announced a 90-day tariff ‘pause’ – after the stock market continued to nosedive far lower than any of his billionaire friends could stomach.
This follows the Australian Opposition leader’s decision to wheel back his ban on flexible work hours and commitment to shrink the public service by sacking 40,000 departmental employees.
In both examples, it seems that both men were forced to back flip on the few things they stood for when faced with plummeting opinion polls, and bitter in-fighting within their own ranks.
However, the fall-out from this kind of knee-jerk politics has the potential to cause much more damage to the Australian strongman, given the fact that President Trump has the luxury of having already been elected to the White House by 70 million American voters not even 6 months ago.
With the ripples of global economic uncertainty now growing into crashing waves, and an Australian Federal election set to take place in less than four weeks, it is not yet certain whether the Australian voters really want to roll the dice on gifting the world yet another completely unpredictable and ego-driven world leader in the shape of Peter Dutton.
