Obama says he won’t criticize Trump when he becomes president

Since Obama opened the final foreign trip of his presidency with a stop in Greece on Tuesday, he has tried to reassure his counterparts that the USA will uphold its partnerships and obligations despite the divisive rhetoric of a campaign that ended with the election of a real estate mogul and reality TV star with no prior political or government experience.

Presidents typically refrain from criticising their successors and step away from electoral politics after their time in office.

But ultimately, those two audiences are inseparably linked, he insisted.

Mr Obama added that Syrian President Bashar Assad decided it was worth destroying his country and destroying its population to allow him to stay in power.

He said some of the policy agendas that APEC continues to develop is very relevant to Papua New Guinea and the aim is to take home some of those agenda leading up to PNG’s own APEC Meeting in 2018.

After the photo taking was over, Mr Key and Mr Trudeau walked out together while chatting and laughing with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull.

Ending his final foreign visit as president, Obama pressed Russian President Vladimir Putin – who has a far warmer relationship with Trump – on Syria and Ukraine, and rallied allies to forge ahead with free trade plans that the president-elect has trashed.

It is doomed because Mr Trump says he will not ratify it and the Congress has abandoned plans to do so before Mr Trump is inaugurated on January 20.

“It’s a hard job”.

“That can reverberate through our politics”.

“I want to make sure that handoff is well executed because ultimately we’re all on the same team”, Obama said.

Obama and Trump were fiercely critical of each other during the campaign, with Obama at times calling Trump “unfit” to be president while campaigning fiercely for his preferred successor, Hillary Clinton.

The U.S. president, who had been assuring world leaders about a Trump’s presidency until now, however, asked them to adopt a “wait and see” approach about the president-elect.

Deputy Prime Minister Prajin Juntong told the summit Thailand supported free trade agreements in the Asia-Pacific region.

Both countries helped negotiate a multinational trade agreement with the US and nine other Pacific Rim countries.

“As I have said before, once you are in the Oval Office, once you begin interacting with world leaders, once you see the complexities of the issues, that has a way of shaping your thinking”. He has vowed to put a 45% tariff on Chinese imports if the Asian country doesn’t change practices he says are unfair, risking a trade war between the world’s two biggest economies.

He defended is decision not to invade the country, but warned no end to the bloodshed was in sight. “There really isn’t”, he said.

“If there are areas where the new administration is doing something that’s going to be good for the American people, find a way to work with them”, he said.

“If we do that, then I’m confident that we’ll be back on track”.