Americans now need their government to meet their hopes, needs effectively

The Nov. 3 U.S. election included approximately 147 million presidential votes already counted by eligible voters for Joe Biden (51 per cent) or Donald Trump (48 per cent). Such voter mobilization is rare; the momentum is now with Americans for whom decency in politics matters. Many Canadians support their decision. Trump is probably the most unqualified and unpresidential of his 44 predecessors, ignoring from the outset that his primary duty was to unite Americans behind democracy, equality of opportunity, the rule of law, and other modern features of the American Constitution. He provided instead a continuous stream of deceit, arrogance, racism, disruption, and misogyny. Another major factor against his re-election were the deaths of nearly 238,000 Americans from COVID-19, with 126,000 new cases daily currently. Trump’s response included inaction, mockery, lies, and rejection of mask-wearing and science. As COVID-19 devastated the world economy, many Americans lost their employment-dependent-mostly-for-profit health care, while at the same time Trump sought to remove Obama’s Affordable Care Act from millions of families. Friends of the American people might, however, reflect on the reasons why the election was still relatively close for both the presidency and Congress. One reason was the loss of many manufacturing jobs and factories in states like Michigan and Ohio following China’s admittance to the World Trade Organization in 2001. When Seattle hosted the WTO globalization talks under the Clinton administration in 1999, more than 40,000 protesters from a coalition of labour unions and environmentalists decried the anticipated loss of jobs to overseas sweatshops and jurisdictions with lax or no pollution standards in a race to a globalized bottom. Peter Navarro, who ran for elected office five times in California as a Democrat but became Trump’s director of trade and marketing policy, estimated in a 2012 documentary that China had caused the loss of 25 million American jobs and 57,000 U.S. factories. Navarro concluded that most of China's competitive advantage came from unfair trade practices, including pollution, poor labour standards, government subsidies ... "contaminated, defective and cancerous" exports, theft of U.S. intellectual property, and currency manipulation. Canadians were also victims. In The Expendables, published this year, economist Jeff Rubin chronicles losing some 600,000 manufacturing jobs in Canada—over a quarter of our industrial workforce—since 2000. He also notes that barely two in 10 Canadian workers are still employed in making things. Roughly half of millennials, the largest segment of our labour force, need a second job to pay their bills. In short, the Trump administration changed the conversation about Beijing and got some things right even if it mishandled virtually everything else abroad. Some ex-pat communities who voted for Trump were persecuted mercilessly by China’s president-for-life Xi Jinping: Falun Gong, Uyghur Muslims, Christians, democrats, in general, Tibetans, and human rights advocates. They support Trump’s politics as victims. It’s now well-documented that Beijing murders prisoners of conscience and sells their vital organs to wealthy Chinese and international organ tourists. American voters of origin in Cuba, Vietnam, Venezuela, and other such nations were also attracted to Trump by his constant criticism of Biden-Harris as “socialists/Marxists." Biden and Harris are probably well-positioned to win many of these voters over if they act firmly but prudently to restore the soul of America internationally. Biden noted in Foreign Affairs magazine earlier this year that Trump has “emboldened our adversaries and squandered our leverage to contend with national security challenges from North Korea to Iran, from Syria to Afghanistan, to Venezuela, with practically nothing to show for it. ... (He’s) turned away from the demonstrated values that give strength to our nation and unify us as a people.” Adam Schiff, chair of the U.S. House Intelligence Committee, correctly summarizes: “Joe Biden’s story is one of loss, perseverance, and human decency. His victory, and Kamala’s, show that in America those qualities still matter. That right still matters. Truth still matters. And decency still matters. Rebuilding won't be quick or easy. Let’s get to work.” Americans and democrats globally need more assurances that their hopes and needs are being met effectively by their governments. David Kilgour was elected as both a Progressive Conservative and Liberal MP, ending his 26 years in Parliament as an independent MP in 2006. He’s a former Liberal secretary of state for Latin America and Africa (1997 to 2002) and for Asia-Pacific (2002 to 2003). The Hill Times