The EU–India trade deal marks more than a commercial agreement. It signals a growing willingness among major economies to reduce their exposure to US coercion and to build new trade frameworks beyond Washington’s reach.

The comparative silence from within the Australian government about India’s trade deal with the European Community cannot conceal the opportunities it opens for Australia. It and other trading nations are suddenly in a world which recognises the need to have alternatives to economic, military and cultural rules imposed by Donald Trump and the United States.

It was not conceived that way: the EU-India trade negotiations had been going on for years. But they concluded just after Europe confronted Trump with his lawless and irresponsible behaviour over Greenland and Canada, and his decision to impose extra tariffs on most European countries because they had supported Denmark in rejecting Trump’s demands.

Last week I commented on the silence of Albanese and his ministers over this moment in history. Implicitly I was wishing we had the guts to associate ourselves with a new movement, a new determination, and a feeling that the world is not going to be bullied by Donald Trump.

Trump brought most of it upon himself, but his bluff was called, and he retreated, mumbling to himself. European unity, and its willingness to contemplate the disbanding of an American dominated NATO, as well as a galvanising speech at Davos by the Canadian prime minister, Mark Carney about the potential fate, or fortune, faced by the world according to how they dealt with the threats and bluster posed by Trump.

Trump caved to the pressure – at least as far as with his threats of force over Greenland and his punitive tariffs, and it was clear that most countries agreed with Carney’s description of a potential new economic world order to serve in the place of the international institutions, rules and framework set up 80 years ago. Rules and a framework will no longer dominated by the economic power of the US.

The new system is a work in progress, but the opportunity has been opened for a world trading bloc that does not includes the US. That does not necessarily mean that the US would face boycotts. But since Trump imposes high tariffs without any particular rhyme or reason, producers and traders from other nations would prefer other customers, and the more they did so, the less they would be subject to arbitrary coercion imposed by Trump – perhaps in pursuit of some foreign affairs or defence interest, perhaps in an effort to selectively impose his social, moral or political views on sovereign nations, and only casually in pursuit of a belief that American prosperity and revival will occur by building a tariff wall around the US, in an effort to force manufacturing industry to base itself in the US.

But we can hardly avoid jumping in, fully clothed, into the new swim. The European deal with India creates the prospect of additional world production and trade. Europe has already made similar deals with Indonesia and some other southeast Asian nations – all potential big markets for EU produce, but also potential sources of goods for which there is high demand in Europe. There are sticking points – particularly with agricultural produce, as Australia knows from its own negotiations with Europe as well as India. But even where such agreements do not close all trade barriers, or create a completely free trade zone, the agreements represent a determination to increase trade, and to create new frameworks by which trade disputes can be resolved, where law and settled rules operate instead of ad hoc forms of state intervention, often for purposes having little to do with the actual goods or services bought and sold in the marketplace.

Australia already in bed with most of our trading partners, including China

Australia has trade deals with India and most of southeast Asia, as well as with China, Japan, South Korea, Canada, the US and Britain. It has been in long negotiation with the EU, and the India deal will provide an impetus to a swifter conclusion. Initially, at least, it can be expected that each bilateral deal will have its own peculiar features, but the tendency, particularly if most of the nations are seeking more open economies, and multilateral agreements, will be to smooth many of the points of difference. If nations don’t, experience shows that some of the wealth created will go to third parties and smugglers in a form of arbitrage common with the buying and selling of foreign currency. Some countries will want to exclude some type of domestic production or to set limits on the entry of foreign goods into domestic markets.

But it is not so much sets of individual deals between nations as a network of arrangements between most of the world which provides the opportunities for a new world order. Where agreements are in a pattern they can become multilateral agreements, able to be entered by others on much the same terms.

Indeed there is no reason why China should be excluded from such deals. China has been trying to diversify its markets, particularly because of its trade differences with the US. That said, the US is a major customer of China production. Most of China’s trading partners, including Australia, differentiate between their partnership with the US (and other western alliance nations) on defence matters, and their partnership with China as a market with which to sell our export goods, particularly minerals, and from which we import manufactured goods, including cars. Australia has a substantial trade surplus with China, and it would not suffer if China increased its trade dependence on the US and sold additionally to Europe, to Britain and Canada. Of course the less that the US was a major customer, the less susceptible China would be to American coercion. That America’s attempts to pressure China have been nakedly in its own self-interest (and, sometimes, against Australia’s own economic interests) underlines the principle that mere might is not the law of nations.

In more recent terms, Trump has tended to retreat from warnings that military conflict with China is imminent and probably inevitable. Indeed, he has often been kinder to China (and other authoritarian regimes) than to notional allies. Despite some soothing words, military competition, and provocations on both sides, continue. And our intelligence and defence establishment – each long primed to see Australia’s interests as being in lockstep with the US – are heavily engaged in propaganda against China, demands for more and more military expenditure, ramping up tensions and expressing alarm because the amount of Chinese spying on Australia is getting to levels about even with Australian spying on China.

Trumpism has seriously damaged US power and prestige, and international respect

America has lost power and prestige and respect in the rest of the world from Trumpism. All nations will put their own interests first. But they see the importance of national consistency, a base decency and respect for law and due process. They see the need for restraint and adherence to international norms. As ordinary citizens must conform to national standards, so must nations be good citizens of an international order. But Trump does not play by the rules. He neither promotes basic human values, nor respect for basic human rights. Accused accurately of asking what’s in this for the US, he increasingly seems to be asking “and what’s in it for me?”

But Trumpism has seriously damaged the capacity of partners such as Australia to see Americans as “just like us”, if separated by a common language. Trump’s domestic policies have been as repugnant and lawless as his foreign policies. He has unilaterally suspended the operation of law, defied courts, and incited violence against his citizens. It may well be that he has some mandate for his deportation policies, but he has pursued them with signal cruelty, appeals to lynch law, and a refusal to provide any sort of accounting or accountability for the actions of the paramilitary force, ICE, that carries out the policies. In these, and other areas of administration he has used frank racism, including, for example calling Somalis “human garbage”, abused judges and former officials. He uses his civil service not as stewards of the public interest, but as personal purveyors of revenge against his political enemies and rewards for his political cronies.

He has tried, less successfully, to use America’s military in the same way.

American isolationism is regularly punctured by US breaches of international law, and the rules of the United States, over, say, its invasion of Venezuela, its demands over Canada, Greenland and threats to countries such as Cuba and Columbia. It has heavied most Nato countries about contributing more to Europe’s collective defence against Russia, even as it has been a less than steadfast friend to Ukraine. Its unstinting support for Israel, and willingness to replenish its armouries is the main factor behind Israel’s murderous campaign against the people of Gaza, and Israel’s attack on neighbours, such as Lebanon, Syria, Qatar, Iran and Yemen. It has been the US, not Israel, that has sheltered Israeli politicians and soldiers from accusations of genocide and war crimes.

Trump is a stranger to notions of conflict of interest and mixes his own personal business affairs with public finances, enriching himself enormously during the first year of this term. There is never a discernible connection between what he says he has done or will do and what he does. Even as he has claimed to be virtuous in declaring war on international drug smugglers, he has pardoned smugglers for doing the same thing for which he has been unilaterally executing others. He seems to acknowledge no limitations, even from the US constitution or international law on his power.

Those who have been forced to deal with a changeable temper, erratic exercises of power, tantrums over the fact that he was (rightly) denied a Nobel peace prize, frank nepotism, and deal making for billionaire cronies, simply look away in disgust. He has little political opposition, and bodies which should be providing checks and balances, including the supreme court, simply wave his actions through.

Trump is not a person whose values Australians share. Or which any person believing in government under law should share. The values of his Administration’s leading cronies are not ones we admire. Australians well understand that American defence forces must act in accordance with civilian authority, and understand the efforts they are taking not to step over the line. But the values that lead to an order to attack another country in defiance of established international law, to murder drug smugglers who have survived aerial bombing, or to deploy against America’s own population are not values we share.

There may be some Australians, such as the deputy prime minister, Richard Marles, so enthralled by American power or charm that they will forgive any lawless or wicked act. But they do not represent an Australian consensus, particularly while Trump is in the White House. Some other Australian politicians, including the prime minister Anthony Albanese and the foreign minister, Penny Wong, seem to think that our need for US protection is so great that we must ignore and forgive the way they can gone off the rails. And that we must understand that there is nothing we can do about it in any event. With attitudes so craven and pragmatic, Australia must seem ever to Americans as though it has no relevant or fundamental values at all.

It is from here that Australia can begin to steer in a new direction. First in joining other nations, particularly with Europe and in Asia into economic unions based on free trade. Nations that will not be coerced by arbitrary tariffs, or by a US which thinks little of most of its allies, and often forgets they are, or were, there. Or by a great economy which has strayed further from any rules-based system than any of its major competitors, such as China, or India or the UK has.

Australians have much in common with most of the nations of western Europe, not least in public and private institutions of the various states. We share a good deal of culture and common history with most of the nations in our neighbourhood. Not all are entirely exemplary, and we discuss, debate and sometimes condemn their policies and practices. America, and American policy and practice is also in our area. Perhaps we need no immediate rupture, even if we have reason enough. But as Australia and the US take their own paths, moving further away from shared values, shared interests, and shared visions of good international citizenship, the parting will be inevitable. And good for both nations.