Turnbull said the world was seeing a more “determined” and “undiluted” leader in his second term in the White House and China would take “massive advantage” of the billionaire.
Chinese President Xi Jinping, Turnbull said, had a chance to treat the commander in chief very differently this time around and could present himself as a sort of “anti-Trump” in style.
“I think China will take advantage, massive advantage of Trump,” Turnbull told Bloomberg in an interview.
“What my prediction will be that President Xi will aim to be the exact opposite of Trump, 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.
“And what that will do is build trust with countries, and there’ll be many countries who will, you know, looking at China on the one hand and Trump on the other, will find China a more attractive partner.”
Trump responded soon after in a late-night post on Truth Social.
“Malcolm Turnbull, the former Prime Minister of Australia who was always leading that wonderful country from ‘behind’, never understood what was going on in China, nor did he have the capacity to do so,” he said, shortly before midnight (early afternoon Monday AEDT).
“I always thought he was a weak and ineffective leader and, obviously, Australian’s (sic) agreed with me!!!”
The spat comes as Australia’s push for an exemption to incoming tariffs due to come into effect on Wednesday on more than $1 billion of steel and aluminium exports to the US.
Australian officials have been working desperately behind the scenes and in public to repeat the success of the Turnbull government in securing a carveout.
Turnbull told Bloomberg the arguments for America to leave Australia out of its 25 per cent tariffs on all imported steel and aluminium were the same as in 2018 but he thought it was “going to be a lot harder this time”.
“Trump will be being told, and I suspect he’ll conclude himself that you give one country an exemption, then you have to give another and another, and before long, there are too many exemptions, and you haven’t got much of a tariff,” he said.
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After speaking with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese in February, Trump promised to give “great consideration” to a tariff reprieve for Australia but there were some less positive signals in the following weeks.
“He really doesn’t like the word ‘exemption’,” National Economic Council director Kevin Hassett recently said.
“If I walk in and offer an exemption then I’ll probably get kicked out of the office, we’ll see how it goes, but maybe there’ll be some, but I doubt it.”
Treasurer Jim Chalmers and former prime minister Kevin Rudd, Australia’s ambassador to Washington, have both held high-level talks with senior Trump administration officials this month.
“It is in Australia’s interest but it’s also in the economic interests of the United States for Australia to be exempted,” Albanese said.
Turnbull said Australia was not as economically dependent on the US as Canada and Trump posed greater dangers in other areas.
“The big risk to us is not so much tariffs on Australian exports like steel and aluminium, but rather a slowdown in the global economy, in particular the Chinese economy, which is the destination for much of our exports,” Turnbull said.
Turnbull wasn’t voted out at an election as Trump suggested but replaced by Scott Morrison after calling and losing a party room leadership vote on the back of sinking polling and internal dissatisfaction with his leadership.