China will have to step up to the plate sooner than expected

LAST week, President-elect Donald Trump confirmed his intention to withdraw the United States from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) "from day one" of his administration. In a clip posted on YouTube, he called the TPP "a potential disaster for our country" and said that he would instead "negotiate fair bilateral trade deals that bring jobs and industry back".

The trade agreement involving 12 Pacific Rim countries was the Obama administration's attempt to deny China the right to "write the rules of the global economy". Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan has said that it would be "meaningless" for the 11 other countries to proceed since the TPP would be "meaningless" without US participation.

Indeed, from the perspective of Japan and other Asian countries, a major attraction of the TPP was to anchor the US in the Asia-Pacific region. Without the US, there is little point to continuing the exercise. Worse, the US campaigned actively to get the other TPP members to sign on and quite a few governments had to take domestic political risks to accept American terms; now, the US itself is pulling out.