IF AMERICA is the biggest loser from the election of Donald Trump, can Asia not claim at least second place? Many policymakers and Asia hands argue so. In just seven months Mr Trump has swung “a wrecking-ball into the complex and long-standing machinery” of America’s relations with the Asia-Pacific region, writes T.J. Pempel of the University of California, Berkeley. Such a view is widely shared across Asia: that American leadership, which has underpinned the regional order since the second world war, is in peril under Mr Trump.
The list of concerns is long. Not only is the American president unpredictable. He lacks intellectual engagement in foreign policy and disdains diplomacy itself, except when it is conducted via bombastic tweets. He has ended America’s commitment to multilateral trade in Asia, pulling it out of negotiations for a 12-country Trans-Pacific Partnership, a free-trade grouping encompassing two-fifths of world trade. Economists say this deal would have made all...Continue reading
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