“A referendum for the whole world”: Global voices on the US election

[American2020]

In a few weeks, voters in the United States will go to the polls in an election that could reshape American life for years to come.

But in the stark choice between President Donald Trump and Democratic nominee Joe Biden, Americans will also be choosing the person who will oversee the world's biggest economy, command its most powerful military, and govern a country that still has unparalleled global reach in commerce and culture.

In short, the impact of the election result will reverberate far beyond American shores.

In August, GZERO writers asked local journalists and commentators in 24 countries how the US election drama is playing out where they live, how the most unconventional presidency in modern American history has affected their countries, and what they expect to come next.

https://www.gzeromedia.com/a-referendum-for-the-whole-world-global-voices-on-the-us-election

[Joe Republic]

It’s the same story every cycle.  The rest of the entire (non-corrupt and non-psychotic) world wants the Democrat to win, to help get the fight against climate change back on track, and reapply at least some sense of diplomacy and strategy to global affairs.  The Republicans, of course, never care what anybody else thinks.  "God Bless America, And No Place Else!" "lol how many electoral college votes does the rest of the world have?"

[Arkansas Yankee]

It’s the same story every cycle.  The rest of the entire (non-corrupt and non-psychotic) world wants the Democrat to win, to help get the fight against climate change e on track, and reapply at least some sense of diplomacy and strategy to global affairs.  The Republicans, of course, never care what anybody else thinks.  "God Bless America, And No Place Else!" "lol how many electoral college votes does the rest of the world have?"

I have a feeling at least that the Sunni Arab world And Eastern Europe May not agree with you.

[Arkansas Yankee]

It’s the same story every cycle.  The rest of the entire (non-corrupt and non-psychotic) world wants the Democrat to win, to help get the fight against climate change e on track, and reapply at least some sense of diplomacy and strategy to global affairs.  The Republicans, of course, never care what anybody else thinks.  "God Bless America, And No Place Else!" "lol how many electoral college votes does the rest of the world have?"

I have a feeling at least that the Sunni Arab world And Eastern Europe May not agree with you.

[Kamala's side hoe]

US election seen from Brazil: Trump "polarized Brazilians"

AK: Has the image of the US changed?

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GC: Yes. When I was younger, for example, most of the Brazilians would want to come to the United States to study as exchange student or for college or grad school. And that doesn't happen any more. Many still want to come to the United States for MBAs or LLMs, but younger Brazilians are going to Australia and New Zealand to study English. And when they want to go to college, they are choosing Canada instead of the United States. They are just afraid of what could happen to them if they come to the United States.

AK: What are the most important everyday issues on the minds of Brazilians right now?

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GC: I would mention first, COVID-19, and the second thing would be for sure, the Brazilian economy. But Brazilians don't blame Bolsonaro for the situation. Most people in Brazil think he inherited a major crisis and then there was the pandemic, so it's not his fault. But he has to improve the Brazilian economic situation. And the third thing is still the violence in Brazil, which is still really strong, when you compare it to other major countries around the world.

US election seen from China: Worries about a "hot war"

CS: What do people in China and Hong Kong think of Joe Biden?

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WX: The people here know him quite well, even though he has been hiding, campaigning from his basement at his home in Delaware.

When he was vice president for Obama for eight years, he traveled to China a lot. And he cultivated a personal relationship with Xi Jinping when Xi was the vice president of China. In a sense, he knows more about how to deal with the Chinese officials, he knows more about China than Donald Trump.

However, that does not necessarily mean that China prefers Biden to Trump, which I don't believe is entirely true. China does not have a choice, but has to work with whoever wins in the White House. And secondly, lots of people here believe it's better to work with someone you have already known and spent a lot of time with — "the devil you know."

US election seen from El Salvador: Will the "demonization" of migrants end?

AK: Would you expect any changes in US migration policy if Biden wins?

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SA: All the [Salvadoran] governments of the past 30 years, since the end of the civil war, have suffered the same problem: the huge number of Salvadorans who flee the country because of the violence, the threats, the poverty, or because they want to seek asylum. We have more than 3 million Salvadorans in the United States and the desire to go there has never ceased. During the Obama administration, El Salvador received the largest number of deportations ever in a four-year period, a historical record, and the people kept going. But now, with Trump you have the building of walls and the demonization of Latinos and migrants — a kind of public politics of racism that calls migrants rapists and criminals. And I think Trump has succeeded in scaring people into thinking twice about going.

The only thing that would change, depending on who wins the election, would be the ways in which my compatriots are able to make that journey. I don't think there would be a fundamental change in how the US views Latinos. There would simply be a change that might lower the temperature in the way that the word "migrant" has been demonized or the implications of being "Latino."

US election seen from India: "Deteriorating US-China relationship is a good thing"

GD: Looking back at 2016, how much would you say the outcome of the US election affected your country?

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PC: Well, the Indians were as surprised as anybody else when Trump was elected. They had a very good relationship with both Bill and Hillary Clinton and had assumed that they would pick up a lot of the strands that the bilateral relationship already had based even on their previous experiences with Bill Clinton.

I think with Trump, they came to recognize one thing which they hadn't understood —which perhaps many other countries hadn't understood — that the deep cleavages in the United States, particularly on the issue of equity, had delegitimized the American establishment and that they had not realized how deeply that had occurred.

They were also surprised, and continue to be worried about, the degree to which the Republican Party has turned, as the Americans would say, on a dime, on two key issues: immigration and trade. The Republicans have in recent times at least been the party of free trade and the party of immigration. And Trump obviously turned his party against both of those issues.

The [Indian government] now recognizes they have to invest a lot more in both sustaining the international trading system, as well as working more closely with the Americans on things like immigration, which they've sort of left to the American political system.

America issues more visas to Indians than they do to any other country in the world other than Mexico. Almost a million visas are issued every year to Indians, and the Indian-American community has expanded at an enormous rate.

Before Trump came, it was rising at about 20-25 percent a year, and it has now become by far the largest, wealthiest Indian diaspora anywhere, far surpassing the diaspora that exists, for example, in England. So until now, it's just been taken for granted. And they've been rated as a sort of model immigrant population in the United States.

And now you have a president who is actually saying that, well, I don't really care anything about them. For example, in some of the trade negotiations we have now been holding with the Americans, India is bringing in immigration issues and saying can we incorporate H-1B visas or something into the larger trade dialogue, which is something we've never done.

US election seen from Iran: A "rare window of opportunity"

GD: If Biden comes to occupy the White House and a moderate wins the Iranian election next summer, do you think the Iranian regime might be willing to reengage with the US in a serious way?

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NM: So the Iranians — and this is not just a moderate camp, we hear it from even certain hardliners and the Supreme Leader himself — they have been consistent in saying that they are ready to return to the JCPOA [Iran nuclear deal] if the US does, and sanctions are lifted.

So if a moderate eventually does win the presidency, then that could open the door for a similar situation, as I said, that we would have gotten with a Clinton administration, because it would be basically two terms of a Joe Biden most likely coinciding with eight years of a moderate in Iran. That would be a very rare window of opportunity, because in the past 40 years, one of the issues between Tehran and Washington has been timing.

US election seen from Mexico: "We became an electoral piñata"

AK: What are the most pressing issues for ordinary Mexicans right now?

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CBR: Well, the coronavirus is the context for everything, but number one is economic performance. Last year, the economy didn't grow and this year, projections say it will contract by more than 10 percent because of the COVID emergency. The Mexican people's purchasing power is falling. So the number one priority is to stop the bleeding.

Number two is security. At the beginning of the pandemic, there was this sense that it might actually bring down the levels of violence. But quite the contrary has happened. Organized crime organizations have seen this as an opportunity to take advantage of the weakness of the government in general, and in particular of local authorities who are running out of funds. So homicides are up to record levels.

And I think what is going to become probably one of the top three priorities in the weeks and months to come is: what the hell are we going to do with the children? With the students? Private schools are collapsing because they don't have enough students to start the new year. The public education system is a shambles. It was not ready for the transition from regular classes to online. Is this going to be a lost year? Are we at some point going to go back to normal? This is going to be a source of a lot of anxiety.

US election seen from Nigeria: "The kind of democracy we'd like to be"

WS: Do you think that Nigerians have a strong interest in who actually wins the US election?

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COO: I think it was Gallup who put out a survey of foreign perceptions of the US, but specifically President Trump. And a lot of it was you know, it was found to be negative amongst America's traditional allies — countries like Britain and Germany. But in Nigeria president Trump is actually popular.

I was not surprised, to be frank, that President Trump is personally popular. And this is in spite of the travel restrictions that were placed on Nigeria earlier this year. I've never tried to study this empirically but my sense is that a lot of Nigerians appreciate the fact that he's wealthy and that he's very direct. He's blunt. And he's very critical in very direct ways of a lot of things that they are too.

There's an appreciation for the fact that he's not President Obama. Now, this is a long, complicated thing with the Obama administration related to the 2015 campaign when a lot of Nigerians fairly or unfairly thought that the Obama administration meddled [in the Nigerian election]. And a lot of people appreciate the fact that President Trump is decidedly hands-off when it comes to Nigeria and Nigerian policy.

WS: How well known is Joe Biden inside Nigeria?

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COO: I'd say he's fairly well known here. He was the vice president to, you know, the first African-American president. And obviously the Democratic nominee. A lot of Nigerians watched the Democratic debates. He was a senator who was on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a lot of Nigerian personalities in government and civil society who have been in the private sector have interacted with him.

There's a broad sort of aspirational view of America that this is the kind of democracy that we'd like to be. And they tend to gravitate toward people who resemble that kind of openness and Biden obvious being a Democratic candidate is like that. So they appreciate him.

WS: Obviously, China is playing a larger role in Africa these days, including in West Africa, while the US-China relationship is getting worse by the day. How does that play out in Nigeria?

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COO: Nigerians appreciate the Chinese relationship for what it is — a lot of infrastructure, a lot of loans, a lot of concessionary grants. These have been the cornerstone of Nigeria-China relations, for better or worse. A lot of people feel like that could have come from the US and has not.

There's a sense that the US can afford to, you know, run up trillions of dollars in debt fighting two wars and all of this stuff. And they talk about human rights and opening markets abroad and free enterprise. But when the rubber hits the road, all of what we see is China. So in that sense, there is — I hesitate to call it a disappointment — but there is a desire for the US to do a lot more.

The US and Nigeria relationship is viewed [in Washington] through the lens of China. [Nigerians] don't like that. We want to hear what the US is for, not what they're against. The American rhetoric is much less about what it is doing than it is about what China is doing wrongly. And I think that could be improved.

Nigerians would love for the United States to be a lot less lecturing and a lot more partnering. But if you gave the average Nigerian a choice between where they'd rather go — and this is just my gut feeling as a person who lives in Nigeria, who interacts with Nigerians, who edits at a well-read publication — they'd rather go to America.

US election seen from Philippines: Will the US push China out?

CS: If Biden wins, how do you see him convincing Duterte of anything?

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CE: We had a terrible relationship with Obama. Right now, what really angers Duterte are the actions of the US senators. If there's a way for Biden to talk to the senators to stop or to slow down on Duterte and his allies... If Biden tries to do a different attack than what Obama did with blasting Duterte on human rights, because Duterte doesn't like being shamed in public, that's one thing he could do to try to improve their relations.

You have to understand that Duterte wants to save face in public. Maybe they could negotiate behind closed doors. Not slam him in public because he has this macho image that he has to protect. And that's what he really hates, being criticized in public.

US election seen from South Korea: "US has lost its reputation"

CS: How is the US-China rivalry playing out in South Korea?

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WJY: It affects South Korea, both in security and on the economy/trade. For example, with the Huawei issue on 5G, some South Korean companies want to use parts from Huawei. But with the worsening relations between the US and China, the US government demands its allies and partners not use parts from Huawei. So, the South Korean government has to make a choice whether to use the parts from Huawei or not. And the Chinese government explicitly demands the South Korean government keep using the parts from Huawei. With the experience in the past that the South Korean economy was hurt by the Chinese, the South Korean government is concerned.

In the early 2000s, when relations between US and China were good enough, South Korea enjoyed good economic relations with China and at the same time, good security and overall good relations with the United States. But it seems like it's not going to be possible anymore with the worsening relations between the US and China. And we know that there is a bipartisan consensus within the United States, that a negative view towards China is prevailing in the US. But it seems like that maybe a Biden administration will have a bit more flexibility.

US election seen from Turkey: Turkish people have "a very negative perception of Joe Biden"

CS: And what do Turkish people think about the relationship between President Trump and your President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan?

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IY: Turkish people think that there's a very good relationship between Trump and Erdoğan. The Turkish government believes that Erdoğan can manage to have good relations with Trump based on his personal dialogue with Trump rather than on the rules of international relations. Their relations are based, actually, on the two leaders' personal dialogue. So there is this perception in the Turkish public as well. And the Turkish public mostly thinks that continuing the Trump administration will be more favorable for Turkey.

US election seen from the UK: "Piggy in the middle"

GD: Looking back now, how much did the outcome of the 2016 election affect relations between the US and UK?

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PF: It's a really good hypothetical question. I think if Clinton had won, Europe, Brussels, and Paris would have been much less jumpy about Brexit and therefore might have been more accommodating to the UK, less defensive in its negotiations.

We have ended up with the hardest possible Brexit as a result of that, because, if you remember 2016, the referendum happened for the UK to leave the EU and then Donald Trump won that election — that shock election victory — and suddenly, Trump was really trolling Germany and coming out and questioning the value of NATO. It felt like there was a sort of populist revolution going on all around the world and Brussels felt it was the last bulwark against that and therefore it dug its heels in really quickly.

With a Clinton foreign policy, we would have seen continuity with the climate change agreement. We would have seen the JCPOA [with Iran] persist. It would have felt much more normal, I think, much less mercantilism, much less confrontation with China. And I think that background probably would have made it easier for the UK to transition into its new world post Brexit.

[Hnv1]

Despite being allegedly popular here I don’t think there are that many people who care if he gets re-elected. Anyway in my social circles Trump jokes are quite common as the dumbest president ever.