New Zealand's Prime Minister John Key says that if Donald Trump tries to withdraw the U.S. from trade deals, he shouldn't expect the rest of the world to follow suit.
Speaking to business leaders, Key said he had sensed "tremendous despair'' among attendees of the APEC summit about Trump's position on trade.
He said it's still possible to save the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiated by the Obama administration by introducing cosmetic changes making it acceptable to the incoming U.S. president or crafting a more limited pact among willing signatories that leaves out the U.S.
"Even if the United States doesn't want to engage in free trade, President Trump needs to know other countries do,'' said Key.
Meantime, Mexico's president is taking a cautious approach to Donald Trump's pledges to break up the North American Free Trade Agreement and build a wall to keep out millions of Latino immigrants.
Addressing business leaders at APEC, President Enrique Pena Nieto refused to antagonize the incoming U.S. president even as he strongly defended trade between the two countries.
He said the United States and Mexico ship to each other $1 million worth of goods every minute, generating benefits to companies and workers on both sides of the border that must not be jeopardized.
"In the face of Trump's positioning, we're now in a stage of favouring dialogue as a way to build a new agenda in our bilateral relationship,'' Pena Nieto said.
"Mexico, like the entire world, is about to initiate a new stage with the U.S. and in commercial terms we want to give the right value to this strategic relationship between Mexico and the U.S.''
China's President Xi Jinping is calling for a free trade agreement across the Asia-Pacific region to promote more equitable global growth.
Xi made the forceful call against protectionism in a keynote address to business leaders at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in Peru on Saturday.
Xi said that China has contributed to 40 per cent of global growth since the global financial crisis. China's economy is now cooling as it seeks to rebalance growth away from exports to more domestic sources of growth, but it remains an engine of global growth.
Xi said that more than 700 million Chinese tourists will fan out across the globe in coming years and the country will invest billions abroad.
Still, he said the measure of globalization has to be an improvement in peoples' lives and a reduction of poverty. He said a proposed free trade area encompassing all 21 APEC members can contribute to that goal.