US President Barack Obama pauses during a news conference at the APEC summit in Lima, Peru. Credit:Bloomberg "This is always a useful occasion for us to get together and examine how we can make sure that we're creating more jobs, more opportunity and greater prosperity for all of our countries," Obama said. "So it's wonderful to see all of you again, and I look forward to a constructive discussion." Obama will find that his counterparts are already getting pulled deeper into China's economic riptide because of the pact's demise. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said on Wednesday that Australia wanted to push ahead with a Chinese-led trade pact that would cover Asian nations from Japan to India but exclude the United States. Peru has opened talks with Beijing to join that agreement - the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, or RCEP - as well. Even US business leaders are positioning themselves for the potential opportunities in Asia.

Asian uncertainty: A man walks by an electronic stock board of a securities firm in Tokyo. Credit:AP "Two-thirds of what we do there ends up in another country," said John Rice, General Electric's vice-chairman for international operations. "So if they're going to lower tariffs and trade barriers within that region, we'll find ways to do more there." For the United States, such trade ties have geopolitical undertones. Goodbye and good luck: Barack Obama with Malcolm Turnbull in Lima. Credit:Pablo Martines Monsivais Much of Asia has for decades quietly accepted US security guarantees while also running large trade surpluses with the United States, turning them into prosperous manufacturing powerhouses. But China is now the largest trading partner for most of the region, while at the same time making territorial claims against many of its neighbours.

The neighbours fear they could soon face a stark choice: Accede to China's security demands, or lose access to China's vast market. Trade shift: President-elect Donald Trump at the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey. Credit:AP "The long-term question is whether America pulls back from Asia and makes it easier for China to force countries in the region to make a choice between China and the United States," said Richard Bush, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. When it comes to Asia, the shift in US policy is likely to be among the most pronounced in the new administration. Chinese President Xi Jinping, left, speaks during a meeting with Barack Obama in Lima. Credit:AP

Born in Hawaii, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, and raised partly in Indonesia, Obama has, since his earliest days as president, pushed Asia as his nation's best opportunity for growth. Other than efforts to end two wars begun by his predecessor, Obama's principal foreign policy goal was to shift the nation's attention and military resources away from an ageing Europe and an unproductive rivalry with Russia and toward the fast-growing Asia-Pacific region. It is a goal he partly shared with George W. Bush, whose administration began the negotiations for the TPP. Bush, too, saw the pact as a bulwark against China's rising strategic ambitions. Changing of the guard: Xi Jinping and Barack Obama pass each other at the APEC summit's opening session in Lima. Credit:AP Obama has spent much of the past 10 days putting a brave face on the crushing blow that Trump's electoral victory represents to his legacy. Hours after the results became clear, he told the country and his own weeping staff that "we're all actually on one team". On Monday, he suggested Republicans would find replacing his health care law difficult. And in visits on Tuesday and Thursday to Greece and Germany, he told panicked Europeans that Trump would preserve the NATO alliance.

More than on any other issue, Obama and Trump have diametrically opposing views on Asian trade. And Trump has won. Even White House aides have admitted it. "We're clear-eyed about the current situation, but we believe what we believe about the value of trade and the importance of the Asia-Pacific region to the United States," said Benjamin Rhodes, a deputy national security adviser. Just three days before Obama's arrival here, Peruvian Foreign Minister Eduardo Ferreyros said the country still hoped the TPP would someday become a reality. But given the changing dynamics, his government had also opened talks with Beijing to join the RCEP. "Since Trump is not so interested in requiring economic integration and trade liberalisation, why not have other countries follow this free-trade proposal?" asked Song Guoyou, a longtime trade specialist who is the deputy director of the Center for American Studies at Fudan University in Shanghai. Even Japan, despite facing territorial demands from China and close, but peaceful, confrontations between the two countries' military jets and coast guard vessels, is paying more attention to China's vision for global trade.

"If TPP doesn't move forward, there's no doubt that the focus will shift" to the RCEP, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe told his country's parliament on Tuesday, before meeting Trump on Thursday. Since 2011, trade negotiators from China, Japan, Australia, India and 12 other Asian nations have been meeting several times a year to stitch together the RCEP. And with Trump's victory, those efforts are almost certain to accelerate. Trade officials across Asia met to negotiate details in Cebu, the Philippines, the week before Trump won the election. Almost no one noticed outside of Cebu. The next meeting, in Indonesia in early December, could attract far more attention. "There will be a lot of discussions on the sidelines [of the APEC summit in Lima] on how to deal with Trump," said Kishore Mahbubani, the dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore. Loading

"The biggest winner if you walk away from TPP is China. There's no doubt about that." New York Times