LIMA, Peru—Top world leaders will meet this week to chart a future for free trade—almost a dirty word in a world upended by Donald Trump’s victory in the US presidential election.
US President Barack Obama, China’s Xi Jinping, Japan’s Shinzo Abe and Russia’s Vladimir Putin will be among the leaders in the room in Lima, Peru for the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit from Thursday to Sunday.
APEC summits, which gather leaders from 21 Pacific Rim economies, are meant to forge unity on free trade in a region that accounts for nearly 60 percent of the global economy and nearly 40 percent of the world’s population.
But this year’s event may be unlike any other, coming on the heels of Trump’s shock win in the November 8 election.
The brash billionaire has unleashed deep uncertainty about the postwar world order with his attacks on free trade, immigration and the US role as “policeman of the world.”
By successfully tapping the anger of working-class whites who feel left behind by globalization, Trump has amplified a sense of malaise that began in June with Britain’s “Brexit” vote to leave the European Union—another shock victory for a populist politics of disillusionment with an increasingly borderless world.
President-elect Trump will not be at the APEC summit, but he may well be the dominant presence in the room.
“I think APEC will be about two things—huge questions about what a Trump presidency will mean for trade and work on all non-US pathways forward to advance free trade,” said Deborah Elms, executive director of the Asian Trade Centre in Singapore.
“The US has apparently chosen to hunker down, raise barricades and return to a glorious past of splendid isolation.”
It risks being an awkward summit for Obama, who will wrap up his final foreign tour as president in Peru after stops in Greece and Germany.
Obama, who campaigned against Trump as “unfit” to succeed him, must now reassure colleagues that a Trump presidency will not in fact spell disaster.
Leaders will be looking for signals on the future of Obama’s much-vaunted “rebalance” to Asia and the Pacific.
American allies such as Japan and South Korea are worried the Republican president-elect will cut back the US military, economic and diplomatic presence in the region—leaving them exposed to a dominant China and belligerent North Korea.
