Yet another US pivot to Asia

On the sidelines of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Summit Trump and his South Korean counterpart Lee Jae Myung in an hour and a half meeting, agreed to reduce US tariffs on Korean goods from 25 to 15 percent on most goods. This is on the basis of South Korea agreeing to invest US$350 billion in the US over the next decade. US$150 billion will come from the South Korean ship building industry. South Korea will build a nuclear submarine for the US in the United States, with US technology sharing. This will expand the US capacity to build nuclear submarines. South Korea also wants this technology to build its own nuclear submarines at home.

President Lee requested the taking over of wartime operational control from the current United Nations-US led command structure on the peninsula. This is being welcomed by the Trump administration.

President Lee presented Trump with a gold jewel-crusted Grand Order of Mugungwha, the nation's highest award, and a copy of the Silla Dynasty Gold Crown worn by 8^th Century Korean Monarch.

The Trump-Xi meeting

The Trump-Xi meeting inside a meeting room at a military airbase in Busan was a low point in the Trump Asian tour. The meeting was as sterile as the room it was held in. While en route to the APEC Summit in Busan in Marine one, Trump said he had instructed the Department of War to resume nuclear weapons testing. This not only looked antagonistic, but hollowed an sense of inferiority as well.

China's President XI and his team were very frosty, evidence by the two leaders' public appearances together. Trump attempted to tell the media cluster of the close relationship he had with president Xi a number of times, but this was not reciprocated. Although Trump lowered US tariffs on Chinese goods from 57 to 47 percent, nothing of note eventuated, except for some movement by China on their rare earth export ban to the United States.

The meeting signifies a chronic failure of US policy on China since Trump's inauguration last January.

Kim didn't answer

The final letdown of Trump's Asia visit was the silence from North Korean Leader Kim Jung Un to meet with Trump, as he did during his 2019 visit to the DMZ between the north and south. No final pictures to echo any statesmanship of the US president. There was total silence by North Korea to White House overtures. Kim has already had very successful meetings with Russian president Putin and the Chinese President Xi over the last few months. The Trump meeting was unnecessary from Kim's point of view.

The frosty response to the Trump-Xi meeting in Busan and silence from Kim Jung Un, comes at a time when Russian-US relations as taking a spiral downwards since the Anchorage summit last August. This should be very concerning where the prime theatre of antagonism will be East Asia. All momentum towards a peaceful multipolar co-existence is being erased by US primacy being surpassed by nations possessing much more modern weapons than the US arsenal. It appears Trump and his military and security advisors have not realized the US is no longer the unchallenged military power in the world.

Much of Trump's visit indicated the transactional level of relationships with most of the region's leadership. Certainly, the leaders of the members of ASEAN were polite enough to placate the president during his overnight visit to Kuala Lumpur. Its unlikely, Trump will ever attend another ASEAN Summit unless there is something in it for him.

One of the negative spin-offs of "The Art of the Deal" is that resulting relationships seem to become very transactional. That's how president Trump left his Asian pivot. Perhaps the only real takeaway was the rare earth agreements signed wherever Trump went, although it may take a decade for any of them to come to fruition.

While Trump's "Independence Day" tariff strategy worked well with countries smaller than its own economy, it seems to have backfired on China. The cost of Trump's tariff policy has not only set back Sino-American relations, US consumers are paying for them with the higher prices they are paying for goods.

Trump's pivot, as with Obama before him may in history be seen as Trump's folly. Just as Obama was humiliated in Cambodia back in 2009, Trump was humiliated by the frosty reception of China's president Xi and the silence of Kim Jung Un. This showed that in Asia, Trump isn't appreciated as the "biggest show on Earth" by all. The US will have to re-focus upon the western hemisphere over the next few months, where Chinese and Russian influence aren't too far away.