A farce. Hello u. S. Democrats have taken another major step in the impeachment process but divided congress and the nation so a panel has now approved 2 charges against President Donald Trump and the house of representatives the set to vote in favor of impeachment next week our White House Correspondent kelly how reports from washington. Another ford visit to the white house overshadowed by domestic politics as the president of parent why sat comfortably in the oval office u. S. President donald trump railed against the democrats push to impeach him in congress for his dealings with ukraines president its a witch hunt its a sham its a hoax nothing was done wrong 0 was done wrong its a scam its something that shouldnt be allowed and its a very bad thing for a country and youre trivializing impeachment and i tell you what someday there will be a democrat president and there will be a Republican House and i suspect theyre going to remember that objection the committee has adjourned. But democrats argue trump abused his president ial powers for political gain the House Judiciary Committee voted to approve 2 articles of impeachment against President Trump the Vote Along Party Lines allege trump withheld military aid in order to pressure ukraine to dig up dirt on a political rival former Vice President joe biden trumps also accused of obstructing congressional oversight into the matter for the 3rd time in a little over a century and a half. The House Judiciary Committee has voted articles of impeachment against the president for abuse of power. And obstruction of congress a vote to officially of ph trump is expected next week in the house of representatives hell become just the 3rd president in u. S. History to be impeached trump was visibly angry following approval of the charges against him lashing out at those he believes have done him wrong like the woman overseeing the impeachment House Speaker nancy pelosi is a liar and others a dishonest fake media horrible f. B. I. People crooked hillary a fighting mood morphing into strategy spotted on the white house campus on friday trucks personal attorney and ally Rudolph Giuliani its a signal trump is pushing to call witnesses and expand the impeachment process he says has been politically biased against him even as the republican leader Mitch Mcconnell is pushing for a swift trial in the senate i think theyre giving the signal that this is really just a show trial that senator mcconnell knows where the votes are and knows how this is going to come out and he wants to have a very short proceeding so that they can move past this quickly but for in a tory asli thinskinned president the personal humiliation of a looming impeachment in the house of representatives appears to have only intensified Donald Trumps desire to fight back in the u. S. Senate in an attempt to clear his name can really help get aljazeera the white house. Lets look at the 2 most recent president s to find themselves in a similar position to tromso 1974 the House Judiciary Committee approved 3 charges against Richard Nixon but he resigns before a house vote then in 1980 bill clinton was tried in the senate on 4 articles of impeachment but was acquitted and he stayed in office and in trumps case as weve heard its almost certain democrats will vote in favor of triggering the senate trial process Trumps Republican Party controls the senate so its improbable that the 2 thirds majority required will vote to remove him from office lets bring in john f. Ing there he worked as a Communications Director for the Democratic National committee hes joining us from washington hi there thanks for joining us on the aljazeera news hour so if trump is it created in the senate which really looks likely what is the point of all of this its a great question i think there are a lot of americans asking themselves that too it is true it is very unlikely that the senate is going to remove donald trump nevertheless at some point after enough lines had to be were crossed the democrats had to do this for their own base if youre just talking about a political calculation at a minimum and i think youve seen this with whats bigger bill is doing shes focused on the one thing that is clearly unmistakably impeachable conduct theyre going to put this to a vote republicans are going to defend their guy thats fine at least democrats can say they honored their oath they did what they were supposed to do and move on so that next year they can talk about the Kitchen Table issues that voters are going to be more likely voting on in november but speaking of bases is there any risk at all the this is going to energize the trump base that this actually wont achieve what the democrats wanted to achieve which partly is not another 4 years of the trump presidency. Yeah absolutely i think there is the possibility that this energizes them but honestly it doesnt change that much democrats clearly thought this guys behavior was beyond the pale before impeachment theyll think that afterwards trumps base is going to be what trump space is going to be hes going to whip them up for next fall but if we can have a conversation about how his tariffs are hurting people how his tax bill was a disaster how when he controlled both houses of congress with his party all he wanted to do was to get rid of Peoples Health care if we get back to that conversation thats the conversation that democrats want to be having going into november theres a company they should actually read pretty. Apologies but i mean one of the conversations also thats being had right now is that in fact it is a Strong Economy in the United States and historically incumbent president s overseeing a Strong Economy dont tend to lose an election so would this be any different. Theres a theres a lot of numbers that measure our Economic Performance that are looking very nice right now there are a lot of americans that are not feeling that even though you having records in the stock market and unemployment is low what you see is that 4 out of 10 americans find they dont have enough money in the bank for even a relatively minor emergency you find that 6 out of 10 americans say that their household are living paycheck to paycheck so there are some there are some over performance but what you see is the lions share of that gains going to the very few people at the top of the economic ladder so there is a real restlessness and the opportunity for democrats to make their case on the economy if the democrats feel they can put the impeachment piece behind this thats not to say that this is a purely political calculation though it is absolutely the case that what this guy did is everything that the Founding Fathers and framers of our constitution were worried about when they wrote the impeachment clause and so you see a lot of real personal passion out of the democratic members here and its really fractured congress in a way weve never seen before because the republicans are are just not acknowledging the facts at this point and seeing the the the the plain as of their lying and the players of their refusal to acknowledge facts its really there is no good faith left and so how much of an issue is that for the democrats that you dont really have a single republican joining the democrats on this issue and we really see this partisan divide. Yes its huge we saw in the middle of october there was there was a nice old man republican congressman in florida who run a business and then run for Congress Later in life who said yeah im open to teaching President Trump we got a look at the evidence i dont know what happened in the next 24 hours after that but 24 hours later in outs he was retiring from congress he would not be he was basically made an example of and since then we havent seen much well see there could be a few brave souls in the senate or more concerned about history than they are about donald trump but by and large what we see is this Republican Party is in lock step behind and afraid of don in fact its part of why its so ironic that when they say well nothing we know what nothing went wrong because president selenski of ukraine said nothing went wrong well these guys know very well what its like to be under political pressure from donald trump and to say things they know arent true because of it all right we thank you very much john f. Ing her for joining us from washington and president something of a win on another front the u. S. Supreme court has agreed to hear his appeals in cases relating to his finances trump is trying to block the release of bank records tax returns and other materials there are sought by democrats in congress as well as a prosecutor in new york whos investigating allegations of corruption in trumps real estate business trumps lawyers say its just part of efforts to quote dig up dirt on the president s lets get more on this cross over to mike hanna also joining us from washington so what more can you tell us about these particular cases and the investigations. Well these are 3 separate cases that the Supreme Court has agreed to here they all deal with attempting to a deep dive into President Trumps financial records 2 of the cases involve congressional committees the 3rd involves the new york prosecutor which is in fact a criminal investigation undergoing there so certainly he has lost every single way in every court to this particular point the Supreme Court now at his request saying it will expedite a hearing to decide on the matter were broad terms concerning all 3 cases essentially what that question is whether or not a sitting president can be prosecuted or investigated lawyers are arguing very strongly that he may neither be prosecuted nor investigated while he remains in office but the lower courts have absolutely disagreed with this point they insist that he is not above the law its up to the Supreme Court novel to either reject the surgeon or to agree with it if there are precedents for this mike. Indeed iesus cases involving the separation of powers essentially and the rights and powers of a sitting president thats come up before both bill clinton and Richard Nixon attempted to block attempts to get financial and private details through and clintons case in particular through grand jury evidence now the courts in both nixon and clintons cases ruled very strongly that the president s on not above the law or the Supreme Courts at the time also agreed with these positions so the precedent that is there is that the president is subject to law now the important fact to notice as well is that its not necessarily the president himself subpoenas from congress and from the new york prosecutor have been directed to the subpoenas have actually gone to his Financial Advisors to his accountants so strictly speaking it is not President Trump himself who is being affected directly by this and this is going to be an important element to the whole case an element that the lower courts have pointed out very strongly so the issue here is that when the Supreme Court does hear this and thats going to probably be in march a decision could be expected in june but this is going to be right in the beginning of a president ial campaign so its going to have a massive political impact which is in a way why the Supreme Court has agreed to expedite this case and act on it for the Supreme Court very speedily all right am i can i thank you. Well just days before the u. S. China trade war was about to end struck an interim deal trumpet ministrations called off new tariffs that were due to start on sunday i will reduce existing web use in return china will buy more American Farm products and rules for u. S. Companies accessing its markets katrina new reports on the likely impact for one chinese manufacturing hub. A Christmas Wonderland in southeast china bias from all over the world come to this market in the rue city the Festive Season decorations. But this year its not all merry bright vendors here say the trade war with the United States is bad for business. Business is noise good as it used to be there are more and more sellers and fewer and fewer buy is i can barely make a living no. But christmas has arrived early for these suppliers with chinese and u. S. Negotiators announcing they will sign whats called a phase one deal soon delaying extra tariffs on 156000000000. 00 worth of chinese products including Christmas Trees tinsel and a range of other goods however adolescents want any agreement is only a temporary truce not an end to the trade war they might be able to reach a mild as small trade deal but in terms of the stuff both sides really want the us really want china to get rid of in this drug policy to create a leveling playground for Foreign Companies this is not going to happen anytime soon to many chinese manufacturer is expected agreement is likely to be too little too late extra duties imposed earlier this year some as high as 25 percent have already forced many factories to scale down production and fire stuff these workers have been paid since the trade war began and with good reason the bicycle industry is one of the. Its affected by an increase in tariffs and distracted the eyes on the american diet by the late good supplies bicycles to major u. S. Retailers including walmart and says a rise in tariffs has caused sales to drop by about 20 percent we are sold. Our shares for this person must still see what you want to see how the person was going to do this year because this is a 1st year christmas with the for the purpose of. In order to keep going during difficult times this bicycle maker is relocating some production to cambodia and the asia back in ybor many suppliers have already started moving their focus away from the u. S. Towards new markets in the middle east and africa. Lasts a few months but chinese exporters expect the children between beijing and washington to remain to nettie christmases to come between e. U. Aljazeera china or analysts say the deal falls well short of what President Trump wanted when he fired the 1st shots of the trade war last year from washington alan fischer explains why the u. S. Still sees this as a victory. The white house says that this is a significant and important agreement donald trump himself says its a phenomenal deal theyve been talking about this for a very long time you remember it was back at the beginning of last year that donald trump said that trade wars are good and easy too when there have been discussions which came almost came to a deal but then fell away now the United States says it has a 9 chapter 1st stage agreement with the chinese that covers important issues such as tech transfer intellectual property theft opening up chinas financial income see markets to outsiders namely the United States and also the sale of Agricultural Products donald trump sees that as very important farmers have struggled a lot because of the targets that were imports but he sees the Farming Community of the center of the United States as very much his base his heartland and so as we approach an Election Year he is very keen to address their concerns those a say there are 9 chapters on this the United States hopes to have the deal signed early in january we dont have the thought text of the agreement yet were expecting that around the time of the signing they say its being held up because they have to check the legal and also the technical language as well there is a concern though because theyre saying that they will sell somewhere in the region of 40. 00 to 50000000000. 00 worth of Agricultural Commodities to china over the next 4 years that would take the told her own 200000000000. 00 the problem is its not entirely sure that americas farmers can produce at that sort of level with the current restrictions in place the most important thing this deal deals with is the targets that were due to be imposed on sunday they know essentially gore way but there are still tat of or on chinese goods coming into the United States about 25 percent on 250000000000. 00 worth of goods and 7. Point 5 percent on 120000000000. 00 worth of goods those taught us will start to come off as china starts to meet the requirements that they have agreed to there will be a very strict Monitoring System involved as well says the United States much more to come on the al jazeera news hour including an act of violence at a demonstration divides iraqs government protesters. Mourning in the chair after the worst attack on its military in living memory. And tiger woods u. S. Team