Robert Delaney

How China can help Donald Trump keep his job and end the trade war

Facing impeachment over a phone call to Ukraine, and with his Russian and Saudi links likely to be scrutinised, Trump needs all the friends he can get. China could be that friend, if it brings trade deals he can sell to both Wall Street and policy hawks

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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and US President Donald Trump meet in New York on September 25, on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly. It was the first face-to-face encounter between the two leaders, taking place shortly after Trump released a memo about a phone call with Zelensky on July 25, which was at the centre of a whistle-blower complaint that has an triggered impeachment inquiry. Photo: AFP

Robert Delaney

Published: 12:30am, 1 Oct 2019Updated: 6:18am, 1 Oct 2019

The latest scandal engulfing the Donald Trump White House threatens to divide America more than at any time since the US leader, during his inaugural address, blamed his predecessors and anyone else not supporting him for causing “American carnage”.

It remains to be seen whether Trump sails through the Ukraine crisis the way he managed to escape any consequences for calling on Russia to cyberhack his former presidential opponent Hillary Clinton, one of the focuses of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into the Trump administration’s connections with Moscow.

Whether or not you agreed with Trump’s allegation that his predecessors inflicted carnage on America, or that the Mueller investigation was a partisan hoax, there’s little doubt that the term is appropriate for what’s coming as impeachment hearings get under way.

If we consider the first 2½ years of Trump’s presidency bruising for the American body politic, the remainder of his current term will be bloody.

All of what we saw play out last week in Washington, and what’s to come, should be delighting Beijing. An American populace at war with itself, at the expense of efforts focused on other pressing issues such as infrastructure renewal and shoring up alliances in the Indo-Pacific region, only backs up the Chinese media’s portrayal of Western democracies as flawed political experiments.