Asia is hungry for reassurance from Joe Biden
It worries that a distracted America will pay it too little attention
“WE ARE ALL heaving a sigh of relief,” says a South-East Asian diplomat, about the exit of President Donald Trump. Never has America’s ability to underpin Asia’s stability and prosperity been so doubted by the region’s leaders and policymakers as over the past four years. Unfortunately for America’s standing in the region, the diplomat adds glumly, “The damage has been done.”
The damage was inflicted in part by Mr Trump’s scorn for the kind of open, multilateral trading regimes that have buoyed Asia’s economic success. He demonised the WTO and took America out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a 12-country free-trade deal. In effect, the United States abdicated economic leadership in the region for the first time since the second world war.
This article appeared in the Asia section of the print edition under the headline "Relief tinged with scepticism"
From the January 30th 2021 edition
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