Whither Trump Trade in Asia

Posted: December 13th, 2016

By Clyde Prestowitz

Clyde Prestowitz is the founder and President of the Economic Strategy Institute (ESI) and author of the recently released book - The Betrayal of American Prosperity. Prior to ESI, Prestowitz served as Counselor to the Secretary of Commerce in the Reagan Administration where he headed U.S. negotiations with Japan, Korea, the EU, Southeast Asia, and Latin America and served as a leader of the first U.S. trade mission to China. Subsequently, he became a Fellow of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and was appointed Vice Chairman of President Bill Clinton's Commission on Trade and Investment in the Asia-Pacific Region as well as a member of the Advisory Board of the U.S. Export-Import Bank. Before joining the Commerce Department, he was Head of Global Marketing with the American Can Company, Vice President-Japan for Egon Zehnder International, and Director of European Marketing and Planning for Scott Paper Company.

The election of Donald Trump and the demise of the proposed Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) free trade agreement has unleashed a flood of anxiety-ridden commentary about how China will now seize leadership in Asia and how Trump may launch devastating trade wars that might lead to real wars.

This is mostly nonsense. The notion that the TPP was going to ensure America’s everlasting hegemony in Asia and keep China from spreading its wings was always ridiculous and unfounded. On the one hand, the TPP was never going to change the fundamental alignment of forces and influence in Asia. The United States has been and will, under any circumstances, remain the major buyer of Asian goods. Some note that China is now the biggest trading partner of most Asian countries rather than the United States. But this simplistic glance at statistics ignores the actual pattern of trade flows. Much of what the rest of Asia sends to China is simply assembled there and then sent on to the United States. The major end market is still America. So, in actuality, America remains the biggest trading partner for most Asian countries.

“The Cipher Brief has become the most popular outlet for former intelligence officers; no media outlet is even a close second to The Cipher Brief in terms of the number of articles published by formers.” —Sept. 2018, Studies in Intelligence, Vol. 62

Access all of The Cipher Brief’s national security-focused expert insight by becoming a Cipher Brief Subscriber+ Member.

Subscriber+