The US Congress Decides To Abandon The Approval Of TPP RCEP, Which May Fill The Failure Of TPP

The TPP is the economic knife of Obama's "Return to Asia" strategy, which aims to curb China's growing influence in this strategic region. Now it has become a dead letter, because in Trump After being elected, the US Congress decided to give up approving the TPP. The instinct of aversion to vacuum and the retreat of the United States provide Beijing with a golden opportunity to promote its chess pieces. In Lima, Xi Jinping will try to accelerate China's own plan for the Asia Pacific Free Trade Area.

Even loyal allies of the United States, such as Australia, have reviewed their plans and are now pinning their hopes on getting closer to China. Canberra believes that RCEP is "likely to fill" the failure of TPP. RCEP is another free trade agreement plan signed by ASEAN, Australia and China, but there is no Washington.

Foreign media said that Chinese President Xi Jinping will APEC The Lima Summit played a major role in facilitating the participants to agree to establish the Asia Pacific Free Trade Area. The negotiations may last for many years. Therefore, Beijing temporarily focuses on promoting the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (RCEP). In any case, Washington failed to implement the plan of building a trade union excluding China after 10 years of negotiations, which means the failure of American diplomacy.

In addition to Peru, Xi Jinping will also visit Ecuador and Chile. What is the purpose of these visits? Vladimir Sudalev, deputy director of the Latin American Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, said that China has changed its economic policy and significantly reduced its imports of oil, grain and soybeans. Its current main task is investment cooperation.

In this case, China and Latin America share the same interests. China It is committed to covering Latin America with some trans ocean transport corridor networks, which will extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean, including railways and roads. In Peru, Obama should formally announce to APEC members that the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) is dead, which is the first victim of Trump's administration.

When US President Barack Obama sits with Xi Jinping and other leaders of Pacific Rim countries in Peru this weekend, he may feel that he is handing the key to the global economy to the Chinese leader. The focus of the Lima Summit will not be Obama's TPP, but Xi Jinping's ambition for two other agreements: one is the wider coverage of the Asia Pacific Free Trade Area, and the other is an agreement supported by China that competes with the TPP.

Over the years, on occasions like this weekend's APEC summit, Obama's efforts to promote the TPP have always dominated the agenda. However, Trump's election to the presidency brought all these efforts to an ignominious end. China is losing no time in taking the economic driver's seat, pushing the United States out of its role as the number one advocate of Asia Pacific economic integration.

Joshua Melzer, a former Australian diplomat who currently works for the Brookings Institution in Washington, said that with Trump's election, "many countries have quickly realized that RCEP is the only major Asian trade agreement on the table".