APEC closes in Peru with China’s President Xi front and centre as Trump whiplash looms

Lima, After two days of meetings in Lima that rarely ventured beyond platitudes in discussing the strategies of robust economic engagement, the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum wrapped up Saturday with a spirit of detente that many fear the annual summit may not see again for the next four years.

The 21 leaders from economies bordering the Pacific, including US President Joe Biden, Chinese President Xi Jinping and Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, descended on Peru this week at a time when America’s incoming president, Donald Trump, has vowed to withdraw the US from its leadership of a global free trade agenda.

Few could help noting that Biden’s late entrance to the traditional EC family photo on Saturday lent itself to political metaphor, as the rest of the leaders took their place on the risers before looking around to find Biden missing. They tittered for five awkward minutes before a seemingly dazed Biden arrived and took the stage in the far back corner.

Xi, who draped himself in the banner of globalisation this week inaugurating a massive USD 1.3 billion megaport in Peru and using his speeches to reject protectionism, scored the best spot onstage for the photo, front and centre. The leaders all wore bark-hued wool scarves from Peru in the EC tradition of posing in some garb representative of the host country.

Biden left the stage as reporters shouted questions, asking for a response to this being his last EC summit, and one of his last major global events as US president.

Much of the conversation about EC this year centres on the heightened trade and security rivalry between the US and China. Biden and Xi will sit down later on Saturday for their third and final meeting of Biden’s tenure. They last met a year ago, at EC in California. SZM

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