[Much of Asia has for decades quietly accepted American security guarantees while also running large trade surpluses with the United States, turning them into prosperous manufacturing powerhouses. But China is now the largest trading partner for most of the region, while at the same time making territorial claims against many of its neighbors.]
By Gardiner Harris and Keith
Bradsher
 |
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President Obama in Lima,
Peru, for the Asia-Pacific trade summit. The trans-Pacific
deal was to be among his
signature legacies. Credit Pablo
Martinez
Monsivais/Associated Press
|
LIMA, Peru — A toxic political war over
money, jobs and globalization killed the vast and complex trade deal that was
supposed to be a signature legacy of President Obama. But the deal, between the
United States and 11 Asian and Pacific nations, was never just about trade.
The agreement, the Trans-Pacific Partnership,
was conceived as a vital move in the increasingly tense chess match between
China and the United States for economic and military influence in the
fastest-growing and most strategically uncertain part of the world. The deal,
which excluded China, was intended to give those 11 nations more leverage in
that strained match by providing them with a viable economic alternative. And
its defeat is an unalloyed triumph for China, the country that President-elect
Donald J. Trump castigated repeatedly over trade.
As Mr. Obama meets this weekend with the
leaders who laboriously negotiated the pact, he will find those nations already
getting pulled deeper into China’s economic riptide.
Australia said on Wednesday that it wanted to
push ahead with a Chinese-led trade pact that would cover Asian nations from
Japan to India but exclude the United States. Peru has opened talks with
Beijing to join the agreement as well. Even American business leaders are
positioning themselves for the potential opportunities in Asia.
“Two-thirds of what we do there ends up in
another country,” said John G. Rice, General Electric’s vice chairman for
international operations. “So if they’re going to lower tariffs and trade
barriers within that region, we’ll find ways to do more there.”
For the United States, such trade ties have
geopolitical undertones.
Much of Asia has for decades quietly accepted
American security guarantees while also running large trade surpluses with the
United States, turning them into prosperous manufacturing powerhouses. But
China is now the largest trading partner for most of the region, while at the
same time making territorial claims against many of its neighbors.
The neighbors fear they could soon face a
stark choice among money, pride and place: Accede to China’s security demands,
or lose access to China’s vast market.
“The long-term question is whether America
pulls back from Asia and makes it easier for China to force countries in the
region to make a choice between China and the United States,” said Richard
Bush, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.
When it comes to Asia, the shift in American
policy is likely to be among the most pronounced in the new administration.
Born in Hawaii, in the middle of the Pacific
Ocean, and raised partly in Indonesia, Mr. Obama has, since his earliest days
as president, pushed Asia as his nation’s best opportunity for growth. Other
than efforts to end two wars begun by his predecessor, Mr. Obama’s principal
foreign policy goal was to shift the nation’s attention and military resources
away from an aging Europe and an unproductive rivalry with Russia and toward
the fast-growing Asia-Pacific region.
It is a goal he partly shared with President
George W. Bush, whose administration began the negotiations for the Trans-Pacific
Partnership. Mr. Bush, too, saw the pact as a bulwark against China’s rising
strategic ambitions.
Mr. Obama has spent much of the last 10 days
putting a brave face on the crushing blow that Mr. Trump’s surprising electoral
victory represented to his legacy.
Hours after the results became clear, he told
the country and his own weeping staff that “we’re all actually on one team.” On
Monday, he suggested Republicans would find replacing his health care law
difficult. And in visits on Tuesday and Thursday to Greece and Germany, he told
panicked Europeans that Mr. Trump would preserve the NATO alliance.
But the meetings this weekend, at the
Asia-Pacific trade summit, will very likely have a more funereal feel.
More than on any other issue, Mr. Obama and
Mr. Trump have diametrically opposing views on Asian trade. And Mr. Trump has
won. Even White House aides have admitted to their boss’s bitter defeat.
“We’re cleareyed about the current situation,
but we believe what we believe about the value of trade and the importance of
the Asia-Pacific region to the United States,” said Benjamin J. Rhodes, a
deputy national security adviser.
The allegiances are starting to shift after
Mr. Trump’s election.
Just three days before Mr. Obama’s arrival
here, Peru’s foreign minister, Eduardo Ferreyros, said the country still hoped
the Pacific pact would someday become a reality. But given the changing
dynamics, his government also opened talks this autumn with Beijing to join the
rival, Chinese-led trade pact, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership.
“Since Mr. Trump is not so interested in
requiring economic integration and trade liberalization, why not have other
countries follow this free-trade proposal?” asked Song Guoyou, a longtime trade
specialist who is the deputy director of the Center for American Studies at
Fudan University in Shanghai.
Since the election, Australia’s government
has also called for rapid progress in concluding that rival trade pact. Even
Japan, despite facing territorial demands from China and close, but peaceful,
confrontations between the two countries’ military jets and coast guard
vessels, is paying more attention to China’s vision for global trade.
Australia and Japan have been bargaining for
years with China on the deal. But they wanted it as a complement to the
Trans-Pacific Partnership, to balance their economic relationship with the
United States instead of replacing it with ties to China.
“If T.P.P. doesn’t move forward, there’s no
doubt that the focus will shift” to the China-led deal, Prime Minister Shinzo
Abe of Japan told his country’s Parliament on Tuesday. Mr. Abe met with Mr.
Trump on Thursday.
Since 2011, trade negotiators from China,
Japan, Australia, India and 12 other Asian nations have been meeting several
times a year to stitch together the Regional Comprehensive Economic
Partnership. And with Mr. Trump’s victory, those efforts are almost certain to
accelerate. The next round of talks is to be held in Indonesia early next
month.
Trade officials across Asia met to negotiate
details in Cebu, the Philippines, the week before Mr. Trump won the election.
Almost no one noticed outside of Cebu. The next meeting, scheduled for early
December, could attract far more attention, including some at this weekend’s
Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit meeting in Lima.
“Everyone is waiting to see what will happen
at the APEC summit — there will be a lot of discussions on the sidelines on how
to deal with Trump,” said Kishore Mahbubani, the dean of the Lee Kuan Yew
School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore, said of this
weekend’s meeting. “The biggest winner if you walk away from T.P.P. is China.
There’s no doubt about that.”
Gardiner Harris reported from Lima, Peru, and
Keith Bradsher from Shanghai. Jonathan Soble contributed reporting from Tokyo
and Carlos Tejada from Hong Kong.
