World elections ‘anti-Trump streak’, Korean presidential candidates ‘all pro-Trump’
While ‘anti-Trump’ streaks have been achieved in elections around the world, Korean presidential candidates are all pro-Trump.
In the past two weeks, moderates have gained ground in major elections in Canada and Australia, while parties that borrowed the Trump regime’s ‘America First’ MAGA script have lost.
It has only been three months since President Trump took office again, but his policies, such as imposing tariffs and destroying alliances, have already spread to domestic political struggles around the world, revealing that voters outside the United States are keeping Trump in mind when making their voting decisions.
Korea is the only country that openly carries a flag with the American flag on top and its own Taegeukgi on the bottom, holding street protests and seeking support for the ruling party from pro-Trump forces, and that party has elected former Minister Kim Moon-soo, a supporter of Rev. Jeon Kwang-hoon, an outspoken far-right leader of pro-Trump, as its presidential candidate.
As martial law broke out, opposition leader Lee Jae-myung declared internationally in an exclusive interview with the Wall Street Journal, a conservative American newspaper, “People call me the Trump of Korea,” and “I am a pragmatist.”
Former Prime Minister Han Duck-soo had a phone call with US President Trump on April 8th while he was serving as acting president, and received a “direct instruction to run” from President Trump when he asked, “Have you any plans to run for president?” Acting President Han immediately replied, “I will not be swayed by China,” thereby formalizing his “pro-Trump run for president with an anti-China strategy,” and resigned as acting president and ran for office on the date of the Supreme Court ruling.
Regarding the Korean presidential election, the New York Times stated on the 2nd that the Constitution’s immunity from prosecution “does not specify whether the trial must continue for charges filed before this election,” and “This means that even if candidate Lee Jae-myung is elected, his presidency could be affected by how the Constitutional Court interprets the Constitution.” The New York Times continued, “Former Prime Minister Han said he would complete the constitutional revision within three years and step down so that the presidential and parliamentary elections could be held simultaneously under the new constitution in 2028, and this candidate promised to end the vicious cycle that destabilizes bipartisan conflicts,” and “However, with the election just a month away, it is not yet clear whether either of them can do so.”
Canada and Australia, which revealed their tendencies in this election, have strong political similarities in that they went from being in the same slump to the sovereign sphere of influence of the British imperialist crown with their political systems and industrial structures dependent on the mining industry, while Korea is a hybrid of the Japanese and Australian types that grew rapidly from absolute dependence on the US security economy to Japan’s economic cooperation and trade privileges.
Unlike Korea, Japan demanded the abolition of auto tariffs by offering the US Treasury bonds it holds, $1.13 trillion, as a tariff negotiation card under the Trump administration. Japanese Finance Minister Katsunobu Kato said on the 3rd that “it could be a card on the table” in tariff negotiations with the Trump administration, adding, “It exists as a card, but I think whether we use it or not will be a separate decision,” on the state-run TV Tokyo news show.
On the 4th, regarding tariff negotiations in Washington, Yomiuri said, “According to a Japanese government official, the claims of the United States and Japan were parallel in the talks,” and “Japan is demanding the withdrawal of additional tariffs on major export products such as automobiles, citing the contribution of large-scale investment in the United States to the U.S. economy, so difficult negotiations may continue,” and stated, “Japan and the U.S. are on equal footing.”
Before President Trump took office, the center-left ruling parties in both Canada and Ho Chi Minh City were in poor shape and appeared poised to lose power. The New York Times reported on the 4th that “in the weeks since Trump returned to power, the political scenarios in Canada and Australia have flipped in the same way,” and that “center-left incumbents have outpaced their conservative opponents and ultimately won. And the leaders of the conservative parties in both countries have not only lost their elections but also lost their seats in parliament.”
Charles Edel, the Australian director of the think tank Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), called the Australian election a “landmark victory.”
He said that the Australian election result was partly due to Trump’s tacit interference in the election, although it was mostly focused on domestic issues. “There were enough similarities between the Canadian election and Trump’s increasing tariffs and attacks on U.S. allies to suggest that the Conservatives’ fortunes have been hurt by the increase in tariffs and attacks on U.S. allies,” he told the New York Times.
In Singapore, which is highly dependent on trade like Korea, support has expanded for the current ruling People’s Action Party, which has a platform of “stability from pressure” during times of turmoil. The Singapore election results showed that PAP Prime Minister Lawrence Wong won the election on the 3rd by telling the parliament that Singaporeans would be hit harder by the new US tariffs because of their dependence on global trade, and officially acknowledging and responding to the "slowing down of economic growth" by "bracing for more shocks".
Canada and Singapore were similar in their warnings of a "falling trade advantage" ahead of the election, with Canadian Prime Minister Carney declaring that Singapore's longstanding relationship with the US is "over" and Singapore Prime Minister Wong saying the same.
Prime Minister Wong was honest with voters, saying that "the global conditions that have enabled Singapore's success over the past several decades may no longer be sustainable", and voters supported his return to power. The New York Times analyzed the Singapore election results as “still reinforced by the ruling party’s ‘flight to safety’ strategy.”
The People’s Action Party, which has ruled Singapore since 1959, improved its vote share significantly on the 3rd, a landslide victory for a party that had been at an all-time low in 2020. “This year’s election was seen as a test of its popularity, and the results suggest that previous polls have shown a growing desire for a competitive democracy in the city-state,” the New York Times said.
“This is another example of the Trump effect,” said Cherian George, a Singaporean political analyst, in a statement to the New York Times. “Deep concerns about Trump’s trade war are leading a decisive majority of voters to show strong support for the incumbent president.”
Germany’s new chancellor, center-right Friedrich Merz, who will be sworn in on June 6, did not gain politically from Trump’s victory as leaders in Canada and Australia have in recent elections, but rather the opposite. Elon Musk, who ran a Chinese Nazi campaign, has been an outspoken supporter of Germany’s fast-growing far-right party, the Alternative for Germany (AfD), and has been streaming video at its events, propelling him into second place, but the Trump-era MAGA has left the established parties with a pre-election declaration of “absolutely not” as coalition partners, making them political losers.
The transcript of the phone call between Acting President Han and Trump (April 8) was in English and is as follows:
<Trump: My staff have been talking well about Acting President Han. I heard he is a promising presidential candidate. Are you going to run in this election?
Han Duck-soo: I am considering it because of various demands and situations. I have not made any decisions. I do not have strong political leadership like Your Excellency.
Trump: You are a right man for the job>.
The day after the AP reported on the Wall Street Journal that Trump was a “dictator” and that there was a coup in Korea, Lee Jae-myung, as the leader of the Democratic Party, gave an exclusive interview to the Wall Street Journal on the 8th, saying, “I highly regard Trump” and “I am like Trump,” and Korean media outlets reported it as “AP praising Korean democracy.”
The AP said in a Korean article, “Political scientists call what happened in Korea an ‘autogolpe’,” and “there are concerns that a similar situation could occur in the US during the second Trump administration.”
<AP ‘Trump Dictator’ Lee Jae-myung ‘Highly Evaluates Trump’ Korean Media ‘AP Praises Korea’, December 10, 2024>