Another four years of Trump in the White House does not bode well for world economy

The mission of this column is to meditate and reflect upon practical issues that could resolve SA’s triple challenges of unemployment, inequality and poverty. However, as and when issues that have an impact on this mission arise, it will depart to reflect on them: and, this instalment is a case in point. 

In hours, tens of millions of Americans will have voted in the most consequential presidential election in recent history. As a South African, I don’t have a vote to cast, but I do have a stake in the outcome. 

For a start, as a businessman, the nature of the outcome of this election will affect the global environment in which my investments are made. A disputed outcome, a spectre hanging ominously over this election, will cause global uncertainty for weeks. As a businessman, I know only too well how bad uncertainty is to the world economy, especially one struggling to cope with the most devastating pandemic. 

Also, coming from a country which borrows in American dollars I have to care about what happens in the US.  For the record, I have never met President Donald Trump. Neither have I met former vice-president and his Democratic challenger Joe Biden. 

However, I have felt the impact of Trump’s divisive and destructive presidency over the past four years. I shudder to think what the impact of another four years will be to the world economy and the rules-based trading system. 

The list of Trump’s positive contributions to the world’s community of nations is shorter: top on this list is that he has started no new war. 

He did, however, start a trade war and a currency war with China which have damaged the global economy and world trade. Even before Covid-19 struck a devastating blow to global trade and the world economy, the negative impact of the Sino-US trade war was evident.

Worse, his Make-America-Great strategy including retrenching America’s global military, economic and humanitarian role, has weakened the world’s long-standing rules-based trading system. To be fair to Trump, the world’s trading system was not perfect. It was old and archaic, and had failed to keep up with the changing trading system. The system, as represented by the World Trade Organisation (WTO), was designed to govern mainly agriculture and manufacturing. It was ill-equipped to deal with trade in services, e-commerce, global finance and technological advances. It badly needed modernisation.

Instead of driving its modernisation agenda, Trump’s administration broke it with two blows. First, America refused to support the appointment of WTO’s new appeal judges – the dispute-resolution structure, forcing other WTO members to work out alternative dispute resolution mechanisms; and second, the WTO is without a director-general following the early departure of its boss, Roberto Azevedo, because the Trump administration is refusing to support former Nigerian finance minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, the front-runner, as the next chief.

After four years in power, Africa has very little to show from a Trump presidency. Another four years at the White House might prove catastrophic with a broken world trading system. After all, had the US supported the selection of new WTO judges the US-China trade dispute would have been referred to it for adjudication, sparing the world its damaging effects.

Lately, Trump has ignored the crippling coronavirus pandemic, and he has been tone deaf to the rising racial tensions in the US. 

It is hard to evaluate what Biden would do for Americans, the world and Africa because the presidential race has been largely fought on the US domestic agenda. Building on his track record as Barack Obama’s deputy for eight years, he has promised to rebuild America’s global stature as a constructive player, drive an inclusive growth agenda and repair Trump’s damage. 

The success of Biden’s presidency should be easy to define: if Americans gave him four years in office, and all he did was to undo the damage Trump caused to the world economy that would be a good start. Today, Americans have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to elect a leadership that will get their country to embrace the primacy of science and truth, and rebuild a fairer, caring and rules-based world order to speed up a post-pandemic recovery. 

• Zungu is the founder of Zungu Investment Company, owner of AmaZulu Football Club and president of the Black Business Council