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Asia Times Online :: Post-US world born in Phnom Penh
It is symptomatic of the national condition of the United States that the worst humiliation ever suffered by it as a nation, and by a US president personally, passed almost without comment last week. I refer to the November 20 announcement at a summit meeting in Phnom Penh that 15 Asian nations, comprising half the world's population, would form a Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership excluding the United States.
President Barack Obama attended the summit to sell a US-based Trans-Pacific Partnership excluding China. He didn't. The American led-partnership became a party to which no-one came.
Instead, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, plus China, India, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand, will form a club and leave out the United States.
Elsewhere I read that Obama's Trans Pacific Parternship is still being negotiated by 11 nations, so it is not clear that this US initiative is dead. Nor is there anything that precludes these nations from belonging to both international groups. But in order to get a deal Obama will have to agree to trash protectionism that is propping up certain US industries.
After election, pressure grows on Obama in Asia-Pacific trade talks | Reuters