Trump Casts Long Shadow Over Summits as World Holds Its Breath
(Bloomberg) -- An acoustic version of “Smooth Operator” blared from loudspeakers as foreign ministers, commerce officials and business executives sipped Negroni cocktails by the pool of a swanky golf club. At the elite Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation gathering in Lima, there was only one big topic of conversation: Donald Trump.
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Diplomats swapped tips (and horror stories) on dealing with the incoming US president. The last thing you want is him tweeting about an issue you’re working on because then it’s game over, one said. Remember, he holds a grudge, another warned.
Trump’s return didn’t catch APEC attendees off guard — preparations for his possible reelection had been going on for months — but that hasn’t made the prospect of his second term any easier. At a cocktail event in the Peruvian capital for the forum’s VIPs, there was a sense of existential angst in the air.
“You can be prepared to die, but it doesn’t mean you want to die,” quipped one former ambassador. “We’re more prepared this time, but so is he.”
Since the late 1980s, APEC has had a simple aspiration: Make the region richer through better economic integration. But for many, Trump represents the opposite of the free and open trade that has formed the basis of the 21-member group. The president-elect’s threat of universal tariffs is the most immediate worry. Countries will be left queuing up to negotiate a deal, many with little leverage.
Privately, officials raised worries about Trump’s specific threat to impose 60% tariffs on China, a measure that would force Beijing to reroute exports to other parts of the world. They also expressed concerns about the future of the World Trade Organization, which Trump sought to kneecap during his first term.
Publicly, government and business leaders were cautious about commenting on Trump. Some delegations had been advised to steer clear of the topic entirely. JPMorgan Chase & Co. Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon broke that silence with advice to those worried about tariffs: “Read his book. Create options,” Dimon said, referring to a strategy Trump espoused in The Art of the Deal.
It wasn’t much comfort. Trump’s promise of a protectionist America is set to transform global trade and the basis of economic prosperity for developed and so-called middle nations.
Enter President Xi Jinping.
The Chinese leader came to APEC with a clear and simple message: “Tear down the walls” impeding trade and investment. In his speeches at the summit, he pitched China as a bastion of economic globalization and, without calling it out by name, suggested that Trump’s protectionist America would take the world backwards.
It’s hard to ignore the irony that Xi wants to take up the mantle that once defined China’s greatest rival. But he worked hard to get his message across, spending two weeks on a diplomatic blitz through Latin America that also included the Group of 20 summit in Rio de Janeiro. In all, Xi held more than a dozen meetings with world leaders, completed state visits to Peru and Brazil, opened a $1.3 billion port and signed a plethora of investment promises.
Everywhere he went, his motorcade was greeted by Chinese supporters cheering and waving flags — an audience that local Chinese embassies typically drum up during Xi’s overseas visits.
But Trump’s shadow was hard to shake. Indeed, US President Joe Biden seemed relegated to the background as a lame duck. His presence at both summits was arguably defined by his absence, symbolically at least. For Biden’s final APEC “family photo,” he wandered in last and stood in the back. In Brazil, he missed the first version of the (albeit chaotically organized) G-20 snap entirely.
Even Xi struggled to re-focus the G-20 narrative on China’s agenda for trade and cooperation, thanks to another figure who loomed large despite his absence: Russia’s Vladimir Putin. From the gathering’s outset, the presence of North Korean troops in Ukraine injected fresh urgency to discussions about the conflict.
Over the course of the G-20 summit, Ukraine was given US approval to strike targets inside Russia with Western-supplied missiles and carried out its first such attack. On the same day, Putin signed a decree allowing Russia to fire nuclear weapons in response to a massive conventional attack on its soil.
Readouts from Chinese officials about the conflict were thin, offering routine observations about the importance of stable relations and economic ties. Western allies focused on trying to find a faster end to the war. Meanwhile, countries with closer ties to the US — even those, like the UK, that want to improve relations with Beijing — seemed wary of embracing China too warmly.
In all, it was a disorderly and divided gathering of the world’s largest economies. Xi’s call for economic globalization and better trade ties struggled to resonate through the noise.
What now? We wait, one diplomat said. This is a collective holding of the breath until Trump 2.0 is unleashed.
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