Pacific leaders have slammed Australia for putting politics ahead of their island neighbours after they undermined a consensus on a climate change communique.
Key points:
* Groups accuse Australia of "turning a blind eye" to their Pacific neighbours
* New Zealand has been praised for its approach to tackling climate change
* Critics say Australia's focus on coal has undermined its Pacific Step Up
"We came together in a nation that risks disappearing to the seas, but unfortunately we settled for the status quo in our communique," he said on Twitter.
-- Oxfam Australia ?Verified account @OxfamAustralia
PM @ScottMorrisonMP is welcomed to #PIF2019 in Tuvalu by children symbolically submerged in the sea, in a powerful call for meaningful action addressing the #ClimateCrisis Twitter with video --
"Watered-down climate language has real consequences — like water-logged homes, schools, communities, and ancestral burial grounds."
Matthew Wale, deputy opposition leader in Solomon Islands, also condemned the decision on Twitter.
"What a missed opportunity to really 'step up'. 'Family' has been exploited for domestic Australian politics," he said.
"Pacific islanders were hoping for sincerity when we hear 'we're family'. We were mistaken."
'Australia bullies its way through negotiations' Photo: Scott Morrison used a lump of coal to make a point during Question Time in 2017. (ABC News: Nick Haggarty)
"When combatting climate change, it's good to have an ally like New Zealand in your corner. Together, we can save Tuvalu, the Pacific, and the world," he wrote.
-- Frank Bainimarama ?Verified account @FijiPM
#PIF2019: We came together in a nation that risks disappearing to the seas, but unfortunately, we settled for the status quo in our communique. Watered-down climate language has real consequences –– like water-logged homes, schools, communities, and ancestral burial grounds. 7:01 AM - 15 Aug 2019 twitter, with photo --
Youth-led grassroots group 350 Pacific singled out Australia, saying the Government "has turned a blind eye to its closest neighbours' plea for an end to the coal industry".
"The appalling fact in all this is that Australia is granted a seat at the same PIF Meeting table as nations literally struggling to protect the lives and cultural integrity of their people," said 350 Pacific's Patricia Mallam.
"Australia bullies its way through negotiations, attempting to mask the gravity of the climate crisis on paper — when the visible proof in our lives shows otherwise."
The pipped PIF communique also drew criticism at home.
"The Pacific Islanders desperately want us to phase out coal mining. Instead, Morrison backs it in 100%," Greens MP Adam Bandt said on Twitter.
Labor's Pat Conroy, Shadow Minister for International Development and Pacific and a spokesman on climate change, said Mr Morrison's Pacific "step-up"' had been "completely undermined by his intransigence on climate change".
"Because we did not listen to the region and actually actively opposed their deep existential interest, the Pacific 'step-up' is in tatters," he said.
Labor leader Anthony Albanese has maintained that exporting coal is an important part of Australia's economy.
But Mr Conroy said a Labor government could have respectfully disagreed on the Pacific's coal requests if it had tackled other climate concerns.
"If we'd gone to the PIF with genuinely responsible targets … I'm confident a sensible compromise could have been achieved," he said.
"Rather than what occurred here, which is Australia just dug its heels in and has clearly just set itself at odds to the 17 other nations."
The ABC has approached Minister for the Environment Sussan Ley and Minister for International Development and the Pacific Alex Hawke for comment.
Environmental groups also criticised the climate clash.
"Coal will endanger the environment, threaten jobs and expose even more Australians who are already suffering from the volatility of extreme weather as a result of carbon pollution," said Rachel Kyte, CEO and special representative of the UN Secretary-General for Sustainable Energy for All.
"This approach to coal is not only short-sighted, it's reckless and cruel."
Richie Merzian, Climate and Energy program director at The Australia Institute, said the group's research revealed Mr Morrison's "carbon credits loophole is equivalent to eight years of fossil fuel emissions for the rest of the Pacific and New Zealand — and the Pacific rightly asked Australia to cancel them".
"The world was watching to see if Australia meets or sinks the hopes of its Pacific Islands neighbours," he said.
"Australia's Prime Minister waved a lump of coal around Parliament — and now he has put his love of coal ahead of the Pacific's survival."
Trump’s Nationalism Is Arbitrary, Dangerous, Incoherent, and Silly [...] That is why there are essentially no nation-states in the world today, and why Trump’s ode to nation-states is oddly timed. If Trump is right that nation-states are “the best vehicle for elevating the human condition” and vital for “individuals to flourish in the fullness of the life intended by God,” then none of us are living full human lives because none of us live in nation-states. - If Trump is right that nation-states are “the best vehicle for elevating the human condition” and vital for “individuals to flourish in the fullness of the life intended by God,” then none of us are living full human lives because none of us live in nation-states. - P - Almost every state in the world today larger than a micro-sovereignty is a multiethnic, pluralistic, diverse polity. The United States of America has never come close to being a nation-state. P - Perhaps Trump is not referring to nation-states in the strictly academic sense. Maybe what Trump really means is that states, any states, are vital for human flourishing, as opposed to his bête noire, the globalists and their international community. But if that is what Trump means, his claim is even more ridiculous. There are some 193 states in the world, and they vary wildly in their size and character. Is Tuvalu, a democratic micro-sovereignty, equally capable of enabling human flourishing as China, an autocratic continental power that still espouses Marxist-Leninist ideology? Trump doesn’t care, so long as it is a state. Any state — democratic, theocratic, Marxist — will do, apparently. P - Not being a nationalist, I’m untroubled by the absence of nation-states and I don’t feel my life impoverished by it, and I do think some states are better than others at fostering human flourishing. Trump’s claim that we are only fulfilled when we live a cohesive national communities is morally arbitrary and frankly silly. To be sure, I wholeheartedly agree with Aristotle that we are by nature social and political animals, and with Edmund Burke and Alexis de Tocqueville that a rich associational life is an important part of human flourishing. https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=137400387
On Nauru, a Sinking Feeling [...] Climate change also threatens the very existence of many countries in the Pacific, where the sea level is projected to rise three feet or more by the end of the century. Already, Nauru’s coast, the only habitable area, is steadily eroding, and communities in Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands have been forced to flee their homes to escape record tides. The low-lying nations of Tuvalu, Kiribati and the Marshall Islands may vanish entirely within our grandchildren’s lifetimes. https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=65316701
This last 10 years ago.
Youth climate activists crashed the Koch Industries - Americans for Prosperity climate-denial tour with a call for clean energy now. Denier-moonbat Christopher Monckton called them "crazed Hitler youth":
The race to a cheaper dollar -- Here’s one key thing you should know about Trump’s shock to the world economy: it could work
2019, during Trump's 1st term -- "Australian dollar decline holds best hope for economy to escape trade war fallout" [...]* The Australian dollar has been within 10 basis points of its decade low of 67.41 US cents, set in a flash crash on January 3 this year * A 20 per cent slump in iron ore prices has contributed to the Aussie dollar's slide * Economists say the lower dollar should provide a boost to export earnings, especially in industries like tourism and education US President Donald Trump vowed last week to impose 10 per cent tariffs on the remaining $US300 billion ($441 billion) of Chinese imports that are not currently subject to tariffs from the September 1."
Noted: Over the past month, the Australian Dollar has strengthened 0.19%, but it's down by 3.16% over the last 12 months. The Australian Dollar is expected to trade at 0.64by the end of this quarter, according to Trading Economics global macro models and analysts expectations. https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=austrlian+dollar+vs+us+today+
James Meadway
It’s hard to say if the president truly knows what he’s doing. But there is a precedent for the US causing short-term chaos and reaping long-term gain
Tue 8 Apr 2025 01.25 AEST
People with an electronic board showing the Nikkei stock average on the Tokyo stock exchange, Tokyo, Japan, 7 April 2025. Photograph: Kazuhiro Nogi/AFP/Getty Images
It’s less than a week since Donald Trump’s sensational announcement that he was unilaterally ending the world’s trading system with the imposition of a 10% minimum tariff for trading with the US – and a very much higher rate for those countries unfortunate enough to have the US as a major export partner. Long-term allies such as Japan and South Korea have been hammered with tariffs of around 25%, while export-dependent poorer countries such as Vietnam, which sells about a third of its exports to the US, have been hit with tariffs in excess of 45%. A further round of global debt crises is possible as heavily indebted countries face the sudden loss of export earnings.
Global stock markets have tumbled as panicked investors dump shares, and political condemnation has been near-universal. China has already retaliated with 34% tariffs, threatening an escalating trade war. Right now, it looks and feels like disastrous overreach by a uniquely erratic administration at the behest of a president with a terrifyingly limited grasp of how the modern economy works.
Trump has talked about imposing tariffs on the world since he first rose to prominence in the 1980s, when his target was Japan. In a political career notable for its jack-knifes in policy and direction, tariffs – “the most beautiful word in the dictionary” – have been a constant. But this is about far more than his long-cherished whims. However inconsistent or even confused Trump may sometimes appear to be, those around him have a clear-eyed view of what they want to achieve.
His Treasury secretary, hedgefund billionaire Scott Bessent, has spoken of a “global economic reordering” that he intends to shape to the benefit of the US’s elite. Trump’s new chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, Stephen Miran, wrote a lengthy paper, A User’s Guide to Restructuring the Global Trading System, shortly before his appointment. The latter is particularly ambitious – detailing how the US should use not only tariffs but also the threat of withdrawing its security support to compel its friends and allies to accept cuts in payments due from the Federal Reserve on their US Treasury bills. This would be a potentially massive loss to them, akin, in reality, to a US debt default. But it is tariffs that are the cutting edge of the plan – leveraging the US’s power as the world’s largest consumer and greatest debtor to compel other countries into a negotiation on terms.
[Insert: Note that paragraph (with links) of this article was first introduced to the board here, UK first. Vietnam 2nd, China third?, or "a delicate truce." Vietnam, with a large surplus with US, so is (like some others) very dependent upon US consumers after cheap goods, said 25% would be very damaging, while they could handle 20%. Many manufacturing countries have big China inputs, some consensus suggests China is the target of Trump's tariffs. Vietnam, i'd say, with Trump waving huge leverage thanks to Vietnam's heavy reliance on US purchases held commendably firm against Trump threats. Seems Bessent and Miran are the brains behind it all. https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=176412450]
After decades winning in an international trading game it wrote and refereed the rules for, the US is now facing serious competition – primarily from China, but with Europe as an expensive irritant. The response of this administration is to kick over the table, and demand everyone starts again. What it ultimately wants is a cheaper dollar to revive US manufacturing and Chinese competition held off, all the while keeping the dollar as the world’s reserve currency. And the rest of the world will pay the price.
There are precedents. In October 1979, Paul Volcker, newly appointed as chair of the Federal Reserve, drove up interest rates to a remarkable 13% in a bid to tackle inflation, later raising them to 17%. Soon the US was in recession. Millions lost their jobs over the next two years, notably in manufacturing, where soaring interest rates had driven up the value of the dollar, making US exports less affordable on the world market. After a light easing of interest rate hell by the Fed, Volcker applied a second dose of the medicine, driving interest rates up to 19% and forcing the economy back into a double-dip recession. Unemployment peaked at around 10% in late 1982.
Ronald Reagan and Paul Volcker in the Oval Office at the White House, Washington DC, July 1981. Photograph: Bettmann/Bettmann Archive
But by mid-1983, inflation had come down to 2.5%. For the rest of the 1980s, the US economy boomed. The “Volcker shock” appeared to have worked. Volcker is today a folk hero among central bankers: Ben Bernanke, chair of the Federal Reserve during the 2008 crisis, praised Volcker’s “independence” and willingness to brazen out the political storm.
More decisive than lower inflation, however, was the reshaping of the US economy Volcker’s interest-rate shock accelerated: with manufacturing in freefall, investment flooded into finance and property, firing up what became the great credit bubble of the 1990s and 2000s. The world economy was reordered around a US that acted as a giant sink for its output – swallowing exports from the rest of the world on seemingly limitless borrowing. China’s extraordinary boom was the flipside of US debt and deindustrialisation. The Volcker shock, more than any other single action, created the globalised world system that Trump is now bent on destroying.
Few would have bet on Volcker’s world-shaping capacity at the time. The stock market response to the shock was immediate and unanimous. US shares plunged by a record 8% in the two days after his announcement. The S&P 500 lost 27% of its value before August 1982 – two years of grinding decline. Manufacturers and unions hated it, understandably: they were on the wrong side of an epochal reconfiguration of US capitalism. But they were not the only losers: rising interest rates in the US meant less developed countries had to spend more on servicing debts, just as recession squeezed their major export markets. The result was the so-called “third world” debt crisis, as heavily indebted countries across the global south plunged into spirals of economic decline and soaring indebtedness.
Over the weekend, Bessent and commerce secretary Howard Lutnick were doing the media rounds, insisting that there would be no climbdown on the tariffs.
[If they knew they were lying in saying there would be no climbdowns. If they didn't know what Trump intended to do then perhaps they are not in as much control of it as i earlier thought they could be.]
Trump is not for turning on what is clearly for him a personal crusade. Already, countries such as Vietnam are promising to cut all their tariffs on US goods – a clear and brutal demonstration of the US’s continuing economic power. The administration has claimed 50 other countries have also asked to open negotiations. By the end of the week, expect Trump to be triumphantly announcing more such concessions from economies in the global south. His real target – China – will be a far tougher nut to crack, if it breaks at all.
Perhaps the rolling market chaos will become too much. Perhaps the administration will blink first. There is no guarantee this extraordinary gamble will work, not even for those in the clique around Trump. But it would be a mistake to assume it cannot work – and however the pieces now land, they will not return to their old places.
James Meadway is the host of the podcast Macrodose
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