As TPP Dies, Asian Nations Salute Their New “Free Trade” Leader: China

Over the weekend we reported that as Obama was speaking at the APEC summit in Peru, hoping to salvage his global trade legacy, the TPP, China’s President Xi Jinping officially called for the launch of the Free Trade Area of Asia-Pacific for “institutional guarantee of open economy”, a move many had expected would take place as China was eager to fill in the void left by the US in any trans-Pacific trade treaty.
As we previously reported, in his speech in LIma, Xi Jinping sought to position himself as a leader in global commerce, vowing to support trade. The attendees signaled ‘deepening economic integration and opposing trade protectionism,’ the Foreign Ministry spokesman said on Tuesday.
Then, overnight, China got a present when Trump announced in a brief video statement that his first executive order upon becoming president would be to remove the US from the TPP. That’s all Beijing needed to hear and this morning China said it hoped to conclude an Asia-wide trade pact as soon as possible, in what the WSJ dubbed was “a sign of Beijing’s intent to broaden its regional influence amid the apparent collapse of the U. S.-backed Trans-Pacific Partnership.”

This post was published at Zero Hedge on Nov 22, 2016.

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