Obama woos Asia with trade deal asserting US Pacific role
Trade officials from 12 governments are gathering in Hawaii next
week to attempt to hash out the final details of the Trans-Pacific
Partnership.
Carter Dougherty
t @CarterD
President Barack Obama has a dual goal in a Pacific-rim trade deal:
expand trade with allies and cement U.S. influence in the region as an
increasingly assertive China expands economically and militarily.
Trade officials from 12 governments are gathering in Hawaii next week
to attempt to hash out the final details of the Trans-Pacific
Partnership, a pact seven years in the making that would clear barriers
to commerce among nations that produce 40 percent of global economic
output.
“It’s first and foremost a trade agreement and has to be justified on
economic grounds,” U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman said in an
interview. “It obviously has broader strategic implications as well.”
China is not invited to the Hawaii talks, but its behavior in the
past few years has helped the U.S. make a case for the sweeping accord.
Its assertion of control over air travel hundreds of miles from its
coast alarmed nations such as Japan. So did China’s strengthening of its
military presence last year on islands in the contested South China
Sea, home to some of the world’s busiest shipping lanes.
With their Asian allies’ approval, Froman and Obama — who sees the
pact as a key element in his “pivot to Asia” foreign policy — now
regularly make the case that it is a way for countries to band together
and set rules before China does.
- TPP: Anti-China or inducement for China? EIther way, the US wins, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations puts it.
