By The Straits Times | Created at 2025-03-10 04:34:07 | Updated at 2025-03-10 08:11:30
3 hours ago
SYDNEY – The second Trump administration’s poor treatment of America’s allies and global institutions is providing “an opportunity” for China’s president, Australia’s former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull has said, adding that Canberra needs to try to adopt a more independent defence policy as Washington grows more unreliable.
Mr Turnbull, who led Australia from 2015 to 2018, said the world is seeing a more “undiluted” version of Mr Donald Trump in his second term in office, and that his behaviour will be viewed as an “advantage” for China’s President Xi Jinping in international relations over the next four years.
“President Xi will aim to be the exact opposite of Trump,” Mr Turnbull said in an interview with Bloomberg Television in Sydney on March 10.
“Where Trump is chaotic, he will be consistent. Where Trump is rude and abusive, he’ll be respectful. Where Trump is erratic, he will be consistent,” he said.
Through that approach, Mr Turnbull said there would be countries that look at “China on the one hand, and Trump on the other” and would “find China a more attractive partner”.
Mr Turnbull was prime minister of Australia for part of Mr Trump’s first term in office, and had a sometimes fractious relationship with the US president at the time.
Posting to his TruthSocial platform shortly after the interview, Mr Trump said Mr Turnbull “never understood what was going on in China, nor did he have the capacity to do so”.
“I always thought he was a weak and ineffective leader and, obviously, Australians agreed with me,” Mr Trump said. BLOOMBERG
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