While many analysts are trying to predict Trump’s economic agenda — Tax cuts? Infrastructure? Deportations? — and its possible impacts, let’s not forget about the demise of the Pacific trade deal. From The Economist:

TPP’s collapse removes the main economic plank of Barack Obama’s much-hyped, largely abortive “pivot” to Asia. It leaves a gaping hole in the architecture of Asian commerce. And it adds to the strong headwinds that are buffeting global trade. … On the basis of size alone, TPP would have been important, the largest regional trade deal in history. It encompassed 12 Pacific countries, including America, Japan and Canada (see chart). Together, they account for two-fifths of the world economy. But what made it all the more significant was its strategic intent. Notably absent from the membership was China. Economically, this made little sense. Studies indicated that including China, the world’s biggest exporter, would have substantially expanded the benefits of TPP. But America wanted to show that it could set Asia’s economic agenda. China might eventually have been invited to join TPP, but only after America had written “the rules of the road”, as its negotiators liked to say. Matthew Goodman of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, a think-tank, considers its collapse a “body blow” to American economic policy in Asia. … It is also a blow to the global economy. Over the years rich countries have cut tariffs to the point where the main obstacles to commerce now lie in regulations that discriminate against foreign companies. TPP took aim at barriers hidden in government-procurement guidelines and investment restrictions. It would have raised the bar for future trade deals, says Jayant Menon of the Asian Development Bank: “That’s where the biggest loss lies.” … For Asia’s reformers, there is thus no getting around the disappointment of TPP’s demise. Vu Thanh Tu Anh, a Vietnamese economist, says that Vietnam had hoped to use the deal to pressure sluggish state-owned companies to shape up. Shinzo Abe, Japan’s prime minister, viewed it as part of his programme of structural reforms, since it would have exposed coddled Japanese industries such as health care and agriculture to more competition. Even in China, liberal officials thought TPP might prompt the government to loosen its grip on markets in order to join one day.