US plans to counter China’s influence in the Pacific suffers setback

Speaking on the sidelines of the summit in San Francisco this week, Farrell had a slightly different view telling this masthead that he was “disappointed that we are not going to be able to reach an agreement on all four pillars this week.”

However, he accepted that this was part of “the realities of political life in America” after the 2016 presidential election, “where Trump basically tore up the rule book in terms of trade policy in the United States.”

Others were far more critical. Emily Kilcrease, a director at the Centre for a New American Security, questioned whether US trade policy was hitting “rock bottom.”

“It appears so,” she said. “The administration has been clear that it wants to make a decisive break with what it views as the broken trade policies of the past, yet recent events show there is no persuasive vision for what comes next.”

Read the full story and more from The Sydney Morning Herald.