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Congress approves Trump sweeping tax-cut, spending bill

Congress approves Trump sweeping tax-cut, spending bill

Canberra Times3 days ago
On the other side of the ledger, the bill staves off tax increases that were due to hit most Americans at the end of this year, when Trump's 2017 individual and business tax cuts were due to expire. Those cuts are now made permanent, while tax breaks for parents and businesses are expanded.
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Australia needs a new China strategy: America's promised pivot to Asia is unlikely
Australia needs a new China strategy: America's promised pivot to Asia is unlikely

Sydney Morning Herald

time2 hours ago

  • Sydney Morning Herald

Australia needs a new China strategy: America's promised pivot to Asia is unlikely

The ceasefire between Israel and Iran, should it last, is a resoundingly positive development. But regional peace in its current form, after Israeli offensives in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria and Iran, cannot be sustained in the long run without continuous American involvement. This has serious implications for America's longstanding commitment to disentangle itself from Middle Eastern affairs and shift focus firmly to the Pacific and its only peer superpower competitor: China. Successive Australian governments have staked their plans to navigate the growing superpower rivalry in our region upon promises of an American laser-focus on the Pacific that is unlikely to ever truly materialise. Just as Prime Minister Anthony Albanese prepares to meet President Xi Jinping in China this month, the ongoing role of the US in reshaping the balance of power in the Middle East in Israel's favour should have leaders and policymakers here questioning the viability of an American 'Pivot to Asia' that never arrives. For Australians, the stakes couldn't be higher. The pivot was first announced in November 2011, when then US president Barack Obama addressed the Australian Parliament. In response to the disastrous Bush-era campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, Obama declared: 'After a decade in which we fought two wars that cost us dearly, in blood and treasure, the United States is turning our attention to the vast potential of the Asia-Pacific region.' Loading Obama promised to refocus the US-Australia partnership around maintaining a strategic balance as China's power expanded, while emphasising peaceful and co-operative relations in areas of mutual benefit, such as trade, diplomacy, climate and non-proliferation. Australia has doggedly upheld its end of the bargain, providing bases for American forces, joining new US-centred alliances and security pacts, such as the Quad and AUKUS, and signing onto exorbitant arms-procurement programs. But in the 14 years since a US president addressed our parliament, precious little of America's own commitments to the pivot have come to pass. The economic arm of the pivot was strangled in the cradle when President Trump formally abandoned the Trans-Pacific Partnership on the first day of his presidency in 2016. American commitment to diplomacy, multilateral institutionalism and regional trust-building have followed a similar trajectory. But the Trump administration retained a supposedly iron-clad commitment to abandon the neoconservative model of foreign interventions and begin to focus squarely on the challenges posed by a rising China. Trump's consistent stated opposition to these wars was one of the most popular ingredients in his early political success. Arguably the most critical moment in Trump's nascent election campaign occurred a week before the 2016 South Carolina Primary, when he decried the Iraq War as a 'big fat mistake' and called out the Republican establishment for lying about weapons of mass destruction. Trump went on to win South Carolina, and Jeb Bush, once the frontrunner, abandoned his campaign.

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