While the United States and Japan dawdle over the last details of the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement, China is moving to fill the vacuum. Beijing is intent on defining trade relations in the Asia Pacific for the 21st century. A failure to conclude the T.P.P. would be a terrible setback. In place of establishing joint leadership in a rules-based regional economic system based on free-market principles, the American-Japan relationship would suffer from a period of mutual recriminations and loss of trust and cooperation. As both President Obama and Japan’s prime minister, Shinzo Abe, have stressed, the time for bold action to conclude the T.P.P. is at hand. China’s bet against … Continue reading Dennis C. Blair