On Monday afternoon, as I was walking back to my office after giving an interview to Bloomberg News, US President Donald Trump posted on his Truth Social platform. I was, he claimed, a weak and ineffectual leader, didn’t know what was going on in China. “Australians”, he said, agreed with him.
Donald Trump and Malcolm Turnbull at the White House in February 2018.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen
The points I made in the interview, I had made many times, and they were hardly original. His trade war, I said, risked recession. Wall Street agrees. And I pointed out that his chaotic style of government, bullying friends and allies – threatening to annex Canada, seize Greenland, not to speak of abandoning Ukraine – made the United States look like a very unreliable ally.
This would be exploited by China, I said, which this time round would seek to be as unlike Trump as possible. China would be consistent where Trump was erratic, respectful where he was abusive. This differentiation would, I said, cause many countries which were not closely aligned to the US to hedge towards China.
This was all obvious, but it clearly triggered the president, late on Monday night in Washington.
Australia, and Australians, should have higher standards than a K Street lobbyist.
Punctuation aside, his “truth” said more about his thin-skinned, volatile temperament than it did about me. I was so “weak and ineffectual” that I stood my ground in the face of his fury, and finally persuaded him to honour a refugee deal I had done with President Obama. And then I was so “weak and ineffectual” that I managed to persuade him to give Australia an exemption from steel and aluminium tariffs in 2018.
At the time, I was told not to stand up to him. I was told to flatter him, suck up to him, offer him things. I didn’t do that, and I achieved very good outcomes for Australia.
Trump is a bully – that is like saying the Pope’s a Catholic – and if you suck up to him, you will just get more bullying. Of course there are plenty of grifters who want to get some financial benefit or other by ingratiating themselves with Trump and his entourage. But Australia, and Australians, should have higher standards than a K Street lobbyist.
I was not surprised to see the News Corp publications gleefully adopting Trump’s abuse and claiming that I had “torpedoed” any hopes of securing an exemption from steel and aluminium tariffs. It has always been most unlikely that Australia will secure an exemption this time. It was hard enough in 2018 and all the signals from the administration are that the tariffs will be applied across the board.
