Opinion: This is how a superpower commits suicide [View all]

[kpete]

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Despite his tough talk, Trump struggled to secure any major concessions during his visit to China, which refused to budge on core economic and geopolitical areas of disagreement, particularly over North Korea and the South China Sea. Failing to impose his will on the host nation, Trump even ended up giving Beijing “great credit” for its ability to take “advantage of another country for the benefit of its own citizens.” Trump blamed his predecessors for America’s ballooning trade imbalance with China.

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Since Trump’s ascent to power, America’s standing in the world has experienced a virtual collapse. According to the Pew Research Center, international confidence in American leadership has declined significantly in the past year. This has been most acutely felt in the Asia-Pacific region, the new center of gravity in global geopolitics.

Among America’s Asian allies, such as South Korea and Japan, confidence in the American president’s ability to make the right judgment has dropped by as much as 71 percent and 54 percent, respectively. In Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim nation, it dropped by 41 percent. This is nothing short of a disaster for American soft power.

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In short, allies have shown their willingness to move past America and actively construct a post-American world, partly to expand regional trade as well as to keep China’s rising influence in check. I spoke with a veteran American trade negotiator who said it seems highly unlikely that a post-Trump America will ever agree to join a retrofitted version of the TPP, which aims to radically alter the economic configuration of its member states. The U.S. Congress, by law and political tradition, will likely not agree to ratify a free trade agreement unless American negotiators have had a pivotal and sustained role in shaping its outcome. This means allies will have to either forego American participation in the so-called “TPP 11” down the road or, alternatively, effectively freeze negotiations until Washington changes its mind. That’s a lot of wasted time and strategic opportunity.



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https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/theworldpost/wp/2017/11/13/trump-china/?tid=sm_tw&utm_term=.c5948fefea0f