When US President Barack Obama sits down with Xi Jinping and other Pacific Rim leaders in Peru this weekend he may feel he is handing the Chinese leader the keys to the global economy.
For years Mr Obama’s efforts to hammer out the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade pact with Japan and 10 other countries that together account for 40 per cent of the world economy, have dominated discussions at gatherings such as this weekend’s Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit. Along with mooted deals with the EU and others that excluded China, they represented his administration’s brazen push to erect a strategic ring of trade alliances to contain Beijing’s rise.
But Donald Trump’s presidential victory — and the antitrade rhetoric of a campaign catering to disgruntled blue-collar voters in rust belt states — have brought all that to an ignominious end. China is wasting no time in moving into the economic driver’s seat and pushing the US out of its role as the lead advocate of economic integration in the Asia-Pacific region.