BUSINESS REFLECTION: Loaded for Bear: Midterm elections spark relief as US voters embrace dawn of decency

Following the Republicans’ defeat in the midterm elections, Trump will no doubt continue to bang on with his baseless lies about the ‘very bad things’ happening in South Africa. But it will be the quacking of a lame duck.

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As a Canadian watching the US midterm elections from the vantage point of South Africa, I’m breathing a big sigh of relief for my homeland and adopted country – and, indeed, the world.

The biggest external political pain in the ass for both countries has not yet been expunged, but this orange haemorrhoid and his odious bowel – sorry, Maga – movement are in the process of being removed from the US and global body politic.

The US electorate – to use an old Canadian saying for which this column is named – came loaded for bear with President Donald Trump’s Republican Party cult in its sights, and it blasted both barrels.

Ultimately, after nearly two years of Trump 2.0, marked by debasement, misogyny, racism, incompetence, vanity projects and transparent self-enrichment against the backdrop of an affordability crisis fanned by idiotic tariffs and an ill-conceived and unpopular war in Iran, US voters decisively turned the page and embraced decency.

This decency was personified by the stunning victory of James Talarico, who won the US senate race in Texas – the first Democrat to do so in almost four decades.

Young, charming, charismatic and articulate, Talarico wooed Texans by openly speaking about his Christian faith while addressing their concerns – it’s called empathy – without going into the gutter.

His deeply flawed Trump-picked Republican opponent Ken Paxton, with a long list of corruption allegations against him, was the polar opposite – and Texans rejected him and his overlord.

Pronouns: he/haw

This correspondent lived in Texas for more than four years from 2006 to 2011, and trust me, this is seismic, as is Gina Hinojosa’s historic victory over the Republican incumbent Greg Abbott in the governor’s race.

Texas, the second-most populous state in the US, with the winner-take-all electoral college votes that go with it, is now in play for the 2028 presidential election.

Trump still has two more years in office and can still wreak a lot of damage. With the loss of a pliant Congress we will now witness – to quote The Atlantic’s David Frum – “[…] a personality collapse and rage meltdown on the scale of the final sequence of the Lord of the Rings”.

But Trump’s fangs have been blunted while congressional probes into the misdeeds and graft linked to him and his inner circle will limit the snouts in the trough and hopefully bring transparency and accountability to what has been a sinister scramble for loot.

Impeachment is also no longer implausible – Trump now taints the shattered Republican Party, and it will start turning against this political liability. Rats know when to bail from a sinking ship.

The bottom line is that the end is nigh for the fascist threat to the world’s largest economy and its often flawed but laudable 250-year experiment in democracy.

My own concerns that Trump would attempt to steal this election now seem, thankfully, to have passed because of the sheer scale of Republican losses.

Returning to my homeland and adopted land, this is all good news.

On South Africa’s economic front, the rand was the immediate winner as the US dollar tanked on Wednesday, 4 November, amid knee-jerk concerns about tighter regulations on AI – the recent engine of growth in the American economy. That sparked a welcome boost for the rand to back below R16.50/$.

Trump will no doubt continue to bang on with his baseless lies about “white genocide” in South Africa. But it will be the quacking of a lame duck.

And with Texas now in play with its new blue hue in 2028, South Africa’s exclusion from the African Growth and Opportunity Act, aka Agoa, will be temporary – a relatively minor setback considering the fact that our major exports to the US are minerals and metals, which are not effected.

Trump can still do a lot of damage with tariffs and trade – the executive branch of the US government has primary responsibility in this field, as it does for foreign policy.

But South Africa has been busy diversifying its trade profile, and the end of Trump and his trade tantrums are now on the horizon.

Good fences

My homeland’s relationship with its southern neighbour will also begin to change for the better now that the majority of Americans have woken up from their slumber and repudiated the monster they raised, to our collective astonishment and dread, from the political dead in 2024.

Trump, of course, will continue lashing out at Canada and our prime minister Mark Carney, whose thoughtful manner and ability to speak in complete sentences clearly gets under the skin of the oafish occupant of the White House. The US-Canada trade war will also no doubt continue to flare.

But as in the case of his rants and tariff tiffs against South Africa, Canadians now see that there is light at the end of this tunnel. Trump’s blather about turning Canada into the 51st state can now be safely laughed off.

I expect Canadian boycotts of US products to fade and more Canadian tourists to begin trickling back to the US. We do like the warmer weather, and some Canucks enjoy Bourbon.

There will also likely be less fisticuffs in Canada-US hockey games, even while we keep our elbows up.

Of course, it is deeply concerning that an octogenarian who is as dumb as he is vain and crazy is still commander-in-chief of the US military with the nuclear codes.

But at least there is now a firm timeline on this madness, and the disturbing talk of an unconstitutional third term will be dead in the water.

Canada, South Africa and the world woke up on Wednesday to a new dawn – a dawn of decency in the US. DM

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