US should consider supporting Beijing-backed Asia-Pacific trade pact, says Chinese state-run paper
China-led agreement more likely to advance American interests, says China Daily, with president-elect Trump likely to ignore a US-brokered trade deal in the region
US president-elect Donald Trump’s administration should consider supporting a Beijing-backed free trade deal in the Asia-Pacific, state media said on Tuesday, adding that China would be relieved to see a rival American-led trade deal wither under Trump.
During his election campaign, Trump took a protectionist stance on trade issues and labelled the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) championed by President Barack Obama a “disaster”. There is now little chance of it coming up for vote in Washington before his inauguration in January.
Obama had framed the trade pact, which excludes China, as part of his “pivot to Asia” and as an effort to write Asia’s trade rules before Beijing could.
China had feared the United States would use the pact to either force it to open markets by signing up or else to isolate it from other regional economies.
“Of course, Beijing is understandably relieved that the exclusive, economically inefficient, politically antagonising TPP is looking ever less likely to materialise by the day,” the official English-language China Daily newspaper said in an editorial.
The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) trade talks, which are supported by Beijing but to which the United States is not party, are viewed by some observers as a competitor to US economic leadership in the region.