Malcolm Turnbull has turned up the heat on increasingly protectionist US legislators, pleading with them to ratify the Obama-led Trans-Pacific Partnership trade liberalisation agreement and to do it before the looming presidential change-over.

With both the Republican and Democratic presidential nominees opposed to ratification of the TPP because they say it is a bad deal for American workers – code for politically unpopular with blue-collar constituents in a tight election race – Mr Turnbull last night used a speech to the Australian American Association in New York to ratchet up the moral case for trade depicting it as the best answer to the alleviation of poverty and as the antidote to declining strategic power.

It is one of two key messages Mr Turnbull is pushing in New York this week, with the other being his call for more orderly regulation of international refugee flows to ensure the highest number of displaced persons can be helped without endangering domestic political stability and therefor crucial public support for much-needed humanitarian action.

On trade, Mr Turnbull told the influential AAA grouping that democracies had been built and strengthened on "shared values of freedom, democracy, and the rule of law" and that its corollaries were extensive trade, foreign investment, and constant technological and commercial innovation.