Washington

JUST a month before the US election, the presidential campaign and debates in America have already left enormous and largely negative impacts on US-Asia relations. Asians hold acute and largely negative concerns, and the election's outcome is likely to have an outsized impact on America's relations with the region.

The campaigns that began more than a year ago promised little new on Asia policy. An establishment field of Republican candidates plus a New York businessman who has never held elective office confronted a small Democratic field led by a former secretary of state in the Obama administration, Hillary Clinton, who authored its Asia "pivot", and a socialist senator from Vermont.