Australia and New Zealand said on Tuesday that they hope to salvage the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) by encouraging China and other Asian countries to join the trade pact after US President Donald Trump kept a promise to abandon the accord.
The TPP, which the United States had signed but not ratified, was a pillar of former US President Barack Obama's policy to pivot to Asia.
Fulfilling a campaign pledge, Trump signed an executive order in the Oval Office on Monday pulling the United States out of the 2015 TPP agreement and distancing the United States from its Asian allies.
Japan Would Keep Explaining TTP Benefits to USA: Officials
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has touted it as an engine of economic reform, as well as a counter-weight to a rising China, which is not a TPP member.
When asked whether Japan would be open to negotiating a bilateral trade pact with the United States, Ishihara said it was uncertain whether US trade officials would start such negotiations.
“As Prime Minister Abe has made clear, TPP without the United States is meaningless and the balance of interests would crumble,” Japanese Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Koichi Hagiuda told a news conference, adding Japan would keep explaining the benefits of the pact for America.
Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said he had held discussions with Abe, New Zealand Prime Minister Bill English and Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong overnight about the possibility of proceeding without the United States.
"Losing the United States from the TPP is a big loss, there is no question about that," Turnbull told reporters in Canberra on Tuesday. "But we are not about to walk away ... certainly there is potential for China to join the TPP."
In Beijing, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying did not say directly whether China would be interested in joining the TPP but that at a time of economic uncertainly the Asia-Pacific should make its own contributions to growth with openness.
“We think that in the present situation, no matter what happens, all should keep going down the path of open, inclusive, continuous development, seeking cooperation and win-win,” Hua told a daily news briefing.
Obama had framed the TPP without China in an effort to write Asia's trade rules before Beijing could, establishing US economic leadership in the region as part of his "pivot to Asia."
China has proposed a counter pact, the Free Trade Area of the Asia Pacific (FTAAP) and has championed the Southeast Asian-backed Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP).
Hua said efforts on FTAAP should be stepped up, adding China hoped talks on RCEP could be concluded at an early date.
The TTP, which has been five years in the making, requires ratification by at least six countries accounting for 85 percent of the combined gross domestic product of the member nations.
Australia held open the possibility of China, the world's top exporter, joining a revised deal.
"There is no change to our view that free trade is the source of economic growth," Japanese Economy Minister Nobuteru Ishihara told reporters.
Trump took office on Friday and pledged to end what he called an "American carnage" of rusted factories and crime. He vowed to bring jobs back by renegotiating what he called bad multilateral trade deals in favor of bilateral ones.
(At The Quint, we are answerable only to our audience. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member. Because the truth is worth it.)