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We finally have a general election date in Ireland. As generally expected, it’s 29 November.
We’ll look closely at every aspect of the contest, particularly how it relates to farming and rural communities, here and in print over the next few weeks.
But first, we need to look at the impact of the US election’s outcome on Ireland, Europe and farming.
Donald Trump is not the first president to be elected to a second, non-consecutive term. It happened once before, late in the 19th century, when Grover Cleveland fought his way back to the White House.
It’s a monumental political achievement by any standards. That is especially true when you consider that he has been accused of incitement of the 6 January riots following the 2020 election, when Trump supporters stormed the Capitol building as Congress met to ratify the election of Joe Biden.
He is already a convicted felon, having been found guilty of falsifying business records to conceal the shabby truth of a hush money payment to a porn star he had an affair with.
Yet the USA has decided he is the person to lead the country forward, with exit polls citing the economy as the prime motivating factor, particularly for swing voters in swing states.
Voting decisions
What’s interesting about this is that many indicators show the economy to be in decent shape. Unemployment is at 4%, the Dow Jones shows US stocks are at record levels and wages have risen under the Biden administration.
However, costs have also risen, just as they have in Ireland. People feel worse off, they see and feel the higher cost of their grocery bill or a fill of petrol (I refuse to call it gasoline).
And perception can often Trump reality when it comes to people's voting decisions.
The Republican Party has had a triple victory. The presidency has been regained, as has the Senate, which has gone from an effective deadlock to a decisive 53-46 majority.
The 'red wave' has also seen the Republicans confound predictions that they would lose control of the House of Representatives. They now have a trifecta and Donald Trump is likely to use it to pursue his agenda.
Incidentally, why is Trump’s triumph known as a red wave?
Europeans see red as left of centre, the colour of socialism, and blue as right of centre, the colour of conservatism. Confusingly, the US is the other way around.
The Republican Party, whic is more right of centre at this point in time than any in living memory, has red as its colour, while the Democrats, which is to the left of centre, is associated with blue.
Strangely, the emblems of the parties are a red white and blue elephant for the Republicans and a red, white and blue donkey for the Democrats. It seemingly dates back to a satirical cartoonist in the 19th century.
Liberal
It is beyond doubt that the US has moved strongly to the right. The liberal "hope and change' of Barack Obama’s campaign has been replaced with an isolationist 'make America great again' mantra.
The American dream is now in the hands of a bunch of billionaires - men such as Elon Musk, a South African whose purchase of Twitter for $44bn was suspected by many to be about helping to create a political narrative that would lead to a second Trump administration.
If that is the case, his gamble has paid off handsomely. Tesla shares rocketed in recent days, as brokers predicted a favourable climate for that company. Musk himself is worth north of $300bn.
Then there’s Peter Thiel, the co-founder of Paypal, who has been vice-president elect JD Vance’s benefactor. Thiel, a German, has some pretty esoteric views about the weakness of democracy and the need for “strong leadership”.
Perhaps the most striking symbol of the US’s political journey over my lifetime is the close association between Trump and Robert F Kennedy Jr.
His father, Robert Kennedy Sr, presented perhaps the most left-wing platform ever of a presidential candidate with realistic prospects of election.
In 1968, as he visited Indian reservations and spent time with Latino farm workers in northern California, he spoke of the desire to eliminate poverty in the richest country in the world.
Now, his son has hitched his wagon to the New York billionaire who has always epitomised flash living.
Kennedy is poised to hold a position in cabinet, perhaps health. This might affect farmers, as he has very pointed views on food production and is utterly opposed to most pesticides.
The rise of the right is global
It would be easy to paint America as some uniquely reactionary society where populism has overcome progressive, where god and guns have overcome science and logic, but that's to misread the recent political dynamic.
We have strongly right-wing governments in Italy and Austria. The Netherlands, which has been one of the most liberal countries on the planet for decades, now has a hard-right party leading its government.
Then there is Germany. Thurangia, a region formerly in East Germany, voted for a far-right party in its recent regional elections. There is a genuine prospect of that party - the AfD - being voted into office in next year’s national elections. In France, Marine le Pen came pretty close to capturing the presidency in 2022.
We have seen a shift in the opposite direction in Poland and the UK, with right-of-centre governments losing power this year. Mind you, the Labour Party is busy alienating rural voters with the draconian farm transfer taxes imposed in the budget last month.
The Tory Party in the UK is full of admirers of Donald Trump, with new leader Kami Badenoch following in the footsteps of Liz Truss and Boris Johnson.
What difference does any of this make to Ireland and specifically to farmers? Quite a bit actually. I’ll quickly run through three probable outfalls.
As mentioned in the paper this week, the climate agenda is going to come under pressure. Donald Trump is a sceptic on global warming, dismissive of global warming being man-made and absolutely convinced there's no point in doing anything about it.
“Drill, baby drill” might seem a strange pro-oil message from a man who has been sharing stages nightly with Elon Musk, but Donald Trump is massively pro-oil. He couldn’t give a frack for climate change mitigation and pulled the US out of the Paris Agreement in 2016 when he was first elected president.
And if America withdraws from the Paris Agreement again, Irish farmers will ask themselves “what are we doing?”
They will ask where is the value in doing the right thing when nobody else is.
What's the point in combating climate change on our own? It’s the equivalent of emptying water out of a sinking boat while other passengers are drilling holes in the hull.
Expect to see our politicians quizzed on this matter on the hustings over the next few weeks.
Donald Trump has based his economic plan on the imposition of tariffs. He wants to start a trade war.
If he does, that is bad for Irish farmers. When tariffs get imposed, the EU’s food exports are usually in the line of fire.
We are currently seeing that in the spat between China and the EU over electric cars. Apart from direct tariffs on what we sell, the broader threat is to the cost of agri inputs.
They are likely to increase in price faster than commodity prices do in unstable markets. And instability seems inevitable for the foreseeable future.
Donald Trump does not have a good relationship with Ukraine or with prime minister Vladimir Zelensky.
He said he would have solved the Ukrainian crisis in a day - we’ll see what he proposes now.
It seems likely that the burden of supporting the people of Ukraine will fall more heavily on the EU than it did during the Biden administration.
If this is the case, that will put massive pressure on the budget of countries across Europe and the EU’s collective budget.
That spells bad news for the next CAP budget and pledges that a new environmental fund would be created to fund the steps farmers are taking to reduce their carbon footprint.
Transferring national polls into seats is not guaranteed
Unlike the US multi-year electoral marathon, our general election will be an intensive three week sprint. Opinion polls consistently show Fine Gael leading, with Fianna Fáil ahead of Sinn Féin and the current government seemingly poised for a return to office.
However, election campaigns take on a life of their own. It's very likely that all opposition parties will focus on the two issues the government have been unable to get on top of- health and housing.
Fine Gael have a particular issue in that they have lost half of the outgoing cohort of TD's. And they have seen their support slide during each of the last three election campaigns from the moment the Dáil was dissolved up until polling day. The challenge will be turning percentage support into seats, not an easy thing to do in multi-seat constituencies with all kinds of local dynamics. We haven't got one general election so much as we have 43 separate very specific and unique constituency elections.
It's all to play for.
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