Obama confident Asia sees benefits of TPP
US President Barack Obama said on Monday US trading partners in Asia did not need to be persuaded of the benefits of the Trans-Pacific Partnership ( TPP), just that Washington would eventually approve the trade pact.
Obama has made the 12-nation TPP the centerpiece of a diplomatic “pivot” to Asia, but the prospects for US congressional approval have looked increasingly dim, with both major presidential candidates – Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump – standing opposed.
Administration officials had said that Obama would make the case for the TPP during his visit to Asia, including in a speech he has scheduled in Laos.
“I don’t have to sell it to Asian leaders here who were part of the negotiations because they see this as the right thing to do for their own countries,” Obama told reporters at the close of the G20 summit in the eastern Chinese city of Hangzhou.
“And what I’ll be telling them is that the US has never had a smooth, uncontroversial path to ratifying trade deals, but they eventually get done,” Obama said.
“Back home we’ll have to cut through the noise once election season is over. It’s always a little noisy there,” he said.
The White House has said it could still win congressional approval of the trade pact before Obama leaves office, and warned that failing to do so would undermine US leadership in the region and allow China to increasingly set the terms of world trade.
Meanwhile, China is lauding its successful hosting of the G20 summit in scenic Hangzhou, with open confrontation largely avoided and broad consensus reached over the fragile state of the global economy and the need for a wide range of policies to fix it.
There was even a joint announcement by China and United States that they would ratify the Paris climate change agreement, a significant step for the world’s two biggest emitters of greenhouse gases.
But scratch beneath the surface, and the gathering of the world’s most powerful leaders was not all plain sailing – from the distraction of a North Korean missile test to the failure of the United States and Russia to reach agreement over Syria, and diplomatic faux pas to double speak over protectionism.
Chinese state media, while largely basking in the glory of a summit that happened without being too overshadowed by disputes such as the South China Sea, also let slip Beijing’s frustrations at what it sees as Western efforts to stymie its economic ambitions.