I’ll scrap free-trade deal on Day One, vows president-elect

But other Pacific Rim leaders are vowing to pursue market-opening efforts they view as vital for their own countries’ future growth.

Mr. Trump’s election has loomed over the summit of 21 nations, which includes the U.S., China, Japan and Mexico.

Mr. Trump, who has blamed bad trade deals for sending American jobs overseas, has promised to pull out of the 12- nation Trans-Pacific Partnership, one of President Obama’s top foreign-policy initiatives that has yet to be ratified.

“Free trade is an important pillar in our economic development”, Aranda said on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) summit in Lima, Peru.

Japan is also anxious that Trump might follow up his campaign rhetoric and demand that Tokyo pay more for the 50,000 American troops stationed in Japan under a security treaty.

“For any regional trade arrangement to gain broad support, it must be open, inclusive and beneficial to all”, he said, adding that “closed and exclusive arrangement is not the right choice”. “At some point they’re going to have to give some consideration to that”.

“They’ve got to get it all though their own parliaments and they’d all have to agree to it without the U.S.”, he said.

“I am going to issue a notification of intent to withdraw from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a potential disaster for our country”, Mr Trump said. “Instead, we will negotiate fair bilateral trade deals that bring jobs and industry back on to America’s shores”, he said.

“That’s really the most important thing about this agreement because the standards that will be set in managing trade between Japan and the U.S., two very advanced economies, will be the standards which will then be the bases for all parties in the TPP”.

Now, the RCEP is likely the main avenue to a future FTAAP, giving China, as the largest economy among the deal’s 16 countries, a driving role in the future of Asia-Pacific trade.

“Even though the USA has given the suggestion that the TPPA may not be realized, Japan has continued to ratify the agreement”.

The TPP, which excludes China, is thought to have been high on Abe’s agenda when he became the first foreign leader to meet the president-elect in NY last week. NBC’s Chris Pollone reports.

He later pointed to trade and climate change as areas China could be seen to be offering stronger leadership than the United States of America if Trump put his campaign promises into practice.

A proposed deal between the European Union and the United States is now unlikely to be signed after Trump’s win, while a trade accord between the EU and Canada took seven years to complete and was almost torpedoed by resistance from a tiny Belgian region.

Prime Minister John Key of New Zealand, a TPP member, said the pact may be able to go forward with “cosmetic changes” to please Mr. Trump.

Trump had made immigration and job creation the centrepieces of his election campaign – issues that handed him a stunning win over Democrat Hillary Clinton earlier this month. He also said the pact could not be renegotiated. “Every political leader somewhere along the line has burnt a bit of political capital and called in some favours to get TPP there”.

His ruling Liberal Democratic Party pushed TPP ratification through the lower house of parliament and had been set to seek final approval in the upper house. “The uncertain future of the TPP gives momentum to the RCEP, which is an easier-to-do alternative”, said He Weiwen, deputy director of the Beijing-based Center For China and Globalization and a former business attache in the Chinese consulates of NY and San Francisco. So far, no countries from the Americas have joined.