U.S. President Donald Trump departed South Korea ahead of the APEC summit, saying, 'America is respected again.'Mark Schiefelbein/The Associated Press
Musing on his whirlwind diplomatic tour of Asia this week, U.S. President Donald Trump said it had been a “great honour” to meet leaders from across the continent, striking trade deals and shoring up important relationships.
Most importantly, Mr. Trump wrote on social media in his characteristic all-caps style, his visit showed “America is respected again – RESPECTED LIKE NEVER BEFORE!”
Hours after he left South Korea, however, many of the same world leaders clamouring for a meeting with Mr. Trump – including Prime Minister Mark Carney and new Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi – were turning their attention to Chinese President Xi Jinping, whose presence dominated the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, which began Friday in the South Korean city of Gyeongju and runs into the weekend.
Carney accepts Xi’s invitation to visit China as leaders meet in South Korea
A non-binding 21-member forum, APEC accounts for roughly 50 per cent of global trade and 61 per cent of GDP, with the U.S. and China by far the biggest member economies. Beyond citing a busy schedule, Mr. Trump has not said why he did not stay in South Korea after a meeting with Mr. Xi on Thursday, though he is known to favour personal diplomacy over multilateral summits and also left before the G7 meeting hosted by Canada in June.
On Friday morning South Korea time, hours after Mr. Trump greeted trick-or-treaters at the White House, Mr. Xi gave a lengthy speech to the APEC plenary session, in which he extolled the importance of the forum for “advancing the vision of the Asia-Pacific community” and “spearheading the region’s rise to the forefront of global open development.”
The Trumps handed out candy at the White House Thursday.ANNA ROSE LAYDEN/The New York Times News Service
In an apparent reference to the protectionism and aggressive tariffs adopted by Mr. Trump since his return to office in January, Mr. Xi said countries should work together “to safeguard the multilateral trading system,” echoing Beijing’s forthcoming five-year economic plan, announced this week.
“The international situation is fluid and turbulent,” Mr. Xi said. “The Asia-Pacific faces growing uncertainties and destabilizing factors in its development. The rougher the seas, the more we must pull together.”
U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent stood in for Mr. Trump at Friday’s meetings, while Washington’s senior representative to APEC, Casey Mace, defended U.S. involvement in the summit as “very strong and robust.”
As well as his meetings Friday with Mr. Carney and Ms. Takaichi, Mr. Xi is due to hold a bilateral summit with South Korean President Lee Jae-myung on Saturday. In an interview with Chinese state news agency Xinhua this week, Mr. Lee said he looked forward to establishing a new “strategic partnership based on ‘friendly competition’ and ‘equal co-operation.’”
Su Hao, a professor of diplomacy at the Beijing-based China Foreign Affairs University, said that when the U.S. helped establish APEC in 1989 at the end of the Cold War, it was designed to give Washington a single forum through which to interact with a host of developing Asian economies, including China.
The growth of regional economies and offshoring of U.S. manufacturing “has led the U.S. to feel that, on the one hand, the transfer of its industries to the Asia-Pacific has brought it greater profits, but at the same time, it has also caused industrial hollowing out in its own country,” Prof. Su said.
“As a result, the U.S. began to feel that the APEC framework no longer fully served its interests. In fact, during Trump 1.0, he barely showed interest in APEC. Even after Biden took office, although he attended APEC summits, he primarily used it as a multilateral platform for the U.S. to meet and engage in bilateral exchanges with other major powers, especially China.”
By contrast, Prof. Su said, Beijing “has greater room to use this platform to promote co-operation mechanisms between China and other developing and developed countries.”
Shen Dingli, a foreign affairs scholar based in Shanghai, was more skeptical, noting “APEC, G20 and the like are all events of empty talks with no real effects, just like the United Nations.”
Mr. Trump’s Asia trip “from his perspective, has been a great success,” Prof. Shen said. “Him attending APEC wouldn’t shrink China’s space. Him not attending APEC won’t expand China’s space either.”
Indeed, Mr. Trump’s and Mr. Xi’s respective presence at APEC is a reversal of last weekend’s meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations in Malaysia, which Mr. Trump attended but Mr. Xi did not (though Chinese Premier Li Qiang did attend).
Chong Ja Ian, an associate professor at the National University of Singapore, said that as well as China’s economic clout, there were myriad reasons for world leaders to seek a meeting with Mr. Xi, including dealing with “the knock-on effects resulting from the U.S. tariffs,” which has led to Chinese companies diverting exports elsewhere.
“This has resulted in pressure on firms in some of these economies,” Prof. Chong said.
APEC organizers may also be breathing a sigh of relief at Mr. Trump’s absence, which could make it easier to reach a joint statement, typically released at the end of the summit. In the past, Mr. Trump has refused to sign on to such communiques, embarrassing his hosts.
Whether Mr. Trump was there or not, said Drew Thompson, a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore, “the utility, effectiveness and relevance of multilateral economic groupings and organizations have diminished significantly in the nine months since he came to power and fundamentally changed the global economic system, shifting it away from multilateral frameworks of developed and developing economies to a world based on bilateral relationships defined by reciprocity.”
With files from Alexandra Li in Beijing and Reuters
U.S. President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Mark Carney sat across from each other at a dinner hosted by Korean President Lee Jae Myung. Both leaders are in Gyeongju for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit.
The Canadian Press