Tag Archives: Trans-Pacific Partnership

Donald Trump’s scapegoating, zero-sum economic policies, threats to extort close allies over the continuation of the US forward deployment and his radically laissez-faire approach to nuclear diplomacy, will not only ultimately fail to address Americas’ grievances but also risks the future of the US as a Pacific and global power.

ASEAN needs to balance the United States and China. The United States has come late in acknowledging the geo-strategic significance of the organization. Southeast Asian leaders have already had 18 summits with China and 17 with Japan.

All told, companies and groups paid lobbyists $2.6 billion while TPP was on their agenda, though that figure includes the companies’ outlays to lobby on all issues listed along with TPP on each report.

Japan, along with the rest of Asia, must seize anew the opportunity to join in shaping the future of the regional architecture. During the lost decades, Japan’s Achilles heel was its inability to see the bigger picture. Japan must now ‘think big’ and engage multilaterally for the Asian regional order.

Of course President Obama had no choice but to stay at home. It is certainly not his fault that the interests of the United States and its friends have been so seriously damaged by the lack of respect that has emerged in American politics for the core institutions and principles of its great democratic state. The culpability for this latest …