NEWS WRAP

A not-so-simple disconnect

• Pompeo threatens to ‘simply disconnect’ from Australia
  US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo warned the United States would ‘simply disconnect’ from countries whose commercial dealings with China risk the security of communication networks used by US citizens, the US military and intelligence agencies. Pompeo’s remarks were made in response to questions about Victoria signing on to the Belt and Road initiative, during a TV interview on Sky News Australia. The US Ambassador quickly issued a clarification, but not before social media erupted around the use of the word “disconnect” and speculation about what message Pompeo was actually sending, and to whom. READ MORE HERE

• Australia wedged between US and China in economic showdown
  While Secretary Pompeo warns Australia against China's Belt and Road Initiative, the Chinese Communist Party is persisting with economic threats and punishments which Non-Resident Senior Fellow Dr John Lee says is as much about “rage and malice as it is statecraft and calculation”. Along with Japan, Dr Lee says Australia is “the most important regional ally of the US, which means Beijing must carefully consider how hard to push against us”. READ MORE HERE
   
• Biden slams Trump for mocking face masks
  Joe Biden lashed out at President Trump, calling him ‘an absolute fool’ for sharing a tweet which mocked the former vice president for wearing a mask at a Memorial Day ceremony. The stoush is the latest move in the politicisation of mask wearing during the pandemic by the president, who has gone against the recommendations of health experts and has not worn a mask during most public engagements. READ MORE HERE
   
• WHO warns of a second wave amid easing restrictions
  The World Health Organization has warned of a second COVID-19 peak as restrictions begin to ease across the United States. The WHO urged caution in scaling back lockdowns in a bid to return to normalcy, with the organisation’s head of health emergencies saying, “the disease can jump up at any time”. READ MORE HERE
   

• US may be more integral to Australia’s China trade tensions than it seems
  The United States’ trade tensions with China could be playing a bigger role in Australia-China trade frictions than it initially seems. According to Dr Stephen Kirchner, Director of Trade and Investment, China’s duties on Australian barley “may be a cover for a pivot to increase purchases from the US designed to withstand WTO scrutiny”. READ MORE HERE

ANALYSIS

Trump sees political opportunity in protests against enemies

Elliott Brennan
Research Associate

On the 17th of April, President Donald Trump issued a series of calls on Twitter to “LIBERATE” Michigan, Minnesota and Virginia. Within three days, the number of protests in the country had doubled and nearly 100,000 more Americans had tested positive for coronavirus.

New research from the United States Studies Centre using the Global Database of Emotion, Language and Tone, shows that despite the United States having one of the fastest rates of infection in the world in April, the five day rolling average of protests in the country spiked to a level higher than that reached at any time during 2019, the so-called ‘Year of Global Protest’.

The vast majority of the increase in protests from March to April were in opposition to state enforced lockdowns and stay-at-home orders. While the protests spiked after President Trump’s interventions, it is clear that he did not cause the anti-lockdown movement himself. Protests in the United States were already rising rapidly when he weighed in.

This is a common trend not just from the Trump administration, but more generally from the president’s life. The birther conspiracy theory, OBAMAGATE and even the debunked Joe Scarborough murder conspiracy theory all bear the hallmarks of this ability to identify grievances involving his political enemies, and to amplify them.

Even though the gatherings have been smaller than those in 2019, protesting at this time is a dangerous political act. After 1,500 people attended a rally in Madison, Wisconsin, in late April more than 70 people tested positive for the virus who indicated to health officials that they had “attended a large event”.

As the larger of these actions have centred on state capitols, anonymous cell phone data has shown that protesters have often travelled hundreds of miles and even across state lines to attend, before returning home.

For some of these protesters, home can be more rural parts of the United States which often lack the necessary health infrastructure to deal with any outbreak, let alone one as aggressive as the novel coronavirus.

The increase in the number of individual protest events, however small the gatherings and especially considering the health risks, is significant.

For all these reasons it’s hard to imagine any other American president in recent memory seeing an uptick in civil resistance that involved the flouting of public health directives and deciding to lean into it, rather than moving to quell it.

But it’s clear why President Trump has.

For his entire term, the economy has been the president’s golden ticket to re-election. While COVID-19 decimated employment numbers, this increase in protests and the heavy media coverage they’ve been receiving have allowed President Trump to attempt to lay the blame for Americans’ tattered personal finances at the door of their governors’ mansions.

It is a political instinct that has only deepened an already gaping partisan divide in the country and it’s certainly not a ploy guaranteed to win come November 2020. Many of the governors President Trump has targeted are enjoying historic high approval ratings – a phenomenon known as a “rally around the flag”.

By putting personal battles first and seeking to inflate grievances and protests against political enemies, the president has forgone his opportunity to enjoy the same wave of bi-partisan support.

This is an abridged version of an article which originally ran on the ABC.

COVID-19: BY THE NUMBERS

Rolling average of protests per day:
Before tweets 87 | After tweets 272​

President Trump’s LIBERATE tweets came at exactly the point at which protests in the United States were accelerating for the first time since states began imposing stay-at-home orders. What followed the tweets was a further 300 per cent increase on the already rapidly-rising five day rolling average of daily protests.

This peak was higher than any period in 2019, the so-called Year of Global Protest. The highest peak that year was when simultaneous protests were active against the detention of children and for stricter gun control, yet despite the lack of a pandemic, this peak was still 5 per cent lower.

Download a graphics package of US COVID-19 lockdown data figures HERE.

For more on these figures, read the full report Coronavirus and Protest: How COVID-19 has changed the face of American activism by Research Associate Elliott Brennan using the button below.

VIRTUAL EVENT

Trade tensions and economic coercion

What is next for the US-China-Australia relationship?

While the United States and China have been engaged in a trade war for the past several years, recent actions by Beijing seem to have thrust Australia into one as well. With Australian barley, beef, iron ore and higher education all being threatened, the threat is no longer theoretical. Australia is not alone in facing coercive economic pressure from China, but the suddenness and intensity of Beijing's recent actions have caught many by surprise. Understanding the pattern of Chinese behaviour around the world, and the tools which are effective in responding, will be critical as Australia charts its course forward.   

To discuss these issues, please join us for a webinar event featuring the authors of A New Arsenal for Competition - Elizabeth Rosenberg, Peter Harrell and Ashley Feng of the Center for a New American Security - along with John Lee and Charles Edel of the United States Studies Centre.

WHEN:
Thursday 28 May 2020, 11am AEST

COST: 
Free, but registration is essential

VIDEO

President Trump during Memorial Day commemorations

THE WEEK IN TWEETS

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