As U.S. Pulls Back From Pacific Trade Deal, Countries Look to China
As U.S. Pulls Back From Pacific Trade Deal, Countries Look to China
“There is a strategic shift going on between the U.S. and China for leadership in the Asia-Pacific region," says AS/COA's Eric Farnsworth on the impact of the U.S. pulling out of TPP.
As the Trans-Pacific Partnership sought by President Obama has fallen on hard times – the victim of the presidential campaign and President-elect Donald Trump’s pledge to scrap the free-trade accord – new attention is being paid China’s own trade pact for Asia, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership.
With TPP apparently dead, some Pacific-rim South American countries including Peru and Chile are expressing interest in joining an expanded RCEP.
At the same time, China’s President Xi Jinping, in South America for the weekend Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Peru, has busied himself cementing ties with Latin American countries – signing a “strategic partnership” with Ecuador, for example….
…“We’re at an inflection point,” says Eric Farnsworth, vice president of the Americas Society and Council of the Americas in Washington. “There is a strategic shift going on between the US and China for leadership in the Asia-Pacific region, and a TPP on the rocks is very much a part of that.”….
