Inside OutTrans Pacific Partnership may yet live on without Trump’s America

Business leaders from as far apart as Japan, Vietnam and Australia seem unanimous that US refusal to ratify the trade deal should not block agreement among the other 11 signatories

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US President Donald Trump holds up an executive order withdrawing the US from the Trans-Pacific Partnership after signing it in the oval office of the White House on January 23. Photo: AFP

Published: 2:07pm, 30 Apr 2017Updated: 10:23pm, 30 Apr 2017

Maybe the Trans-Pacific Partnership is not quite dead after all. Maybe there are enough leaders with confidence in the long-term benefits of free trade for this deal to be brought back from the brink. Maybe for once, Trump’s America might not be “the indispensable nation”.

Here in Seoul, at the year’s second meeting of Apec’s Business Advisory Council (ABAC), the voices have been unanimous that Trump’s flamboyant January withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) should not be allowed to exterminate one of the world’s biggest and most ambitious trade agreements. At least, not without a fierce fight – likely to be staged during the meeting of Apec Trade Ministers in Hanoi in just under a month’s time.

Perhaps ABAC members’ sudden surge of optimism was unreasonably stirred by the sparkling blue springtime skies over Seoul, with its delicate green ginko trees just coming into leaf, and azaleas ablaze along every roadside, but I think the optimism was deeper than that. Even with Kim Jun-un’s nuclear sabre-rattling just a few kilometres away.

Business leaders from as far apart as Japan, Vietnam and Australia, all of whom have had close and recent briefings from their respective top trade officials, seemed unanimous that US refusal to ratify the trade deal should not block agreement among the other 11 signatories to the TPP. Whether leaders would try to ratify an “Eleven-minus-one” deal, or simply agree to implement its commitments within some other framework, is not so clear.

The mood of government officials was well captured by Ahn Chong-ghee, Korea’s Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs, when he spoke over dinner to ABAC members. Mr Ahn admitted that he felt “disheartened by the recent backlash against free trade”, but was unwavering in his confidence in its merits: “Free trade rests on the conviction that the free exchange of goods, services and ideas will help push back the frontiers of technology and advance human progress. Centuries of human history have shown this to be true … When economies trade, they are more productive and competitive, and enjoy more choices and higher living standards.”

He noted that the Apec economies bore testament to this truth, “achieving unprecedented growth by becoming integrated into a free and open multilateral trading system”. Even that neophyte champion of free trade, China’s President Xi Jinping, could not have said it better in Davos early this year.