Bloomberg: President Obama cancels trip to APEC summit

[roamer65]

Source: Bloomberg

The President has cancelled his trip to the APEC summit in order to work on the budget impasse/government shutdown.

John Kerry will attend and represent the USA.

Read more: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-10-04/obama-cancels-asia-summit-trip-amid-government-shutdown.html

[Tx4obama]

1. Please edit your OP to add an article link

Thanks

[Turborama]

2. Not just APEC, the whole Asia trip.

Which is a bad geopolitical side effect of the shutdown that probably won't be reported inside the information bubble America's MSM likes to keep the populace contained within.

US President Barack Obama has cancelled his trip to Asia because of the US government shutdown.

Mr Obama will miss two summits, including the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation (Apec) meeting in Indonesia.

The decision was made due to the "difficulty in moving forward with foreign travel in the face of a shutdown", the White House said.

=snip=

"The cancellation of this trip is another consequence of the House Republicans forcing a shutdown of the government," the White House said in a statement.

"This completely avoidable shutdown is setting back our ability to create jobs through promotion of US exports and advance US leadership and interests in the largest emerging region in the world," the statement added.

Mr Obama had been due to begin a four-nation Asian trip on Saturday, heading to Bali and Brunei for regional summits before travelling on to Malaysia and the Philippines.

Full article: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-24380990

[karynnj]

3. I suspect that the geopolitical impact is far less than some of the

Last edited Fri Oct 4, 2013, 12:35 PM - Edit history (1)

articles are suggesting. There has been a claim that the "pivot to Asia" has been hurt by what Forbes magazine reported as "Kerry's obsession with the Middle East". Yet, in all the articles the pivot to Asia seems to have as its main product the proposed trade treaty.

Where Obama is sends a message. It seems that he and his staff consider that the optics of leaving the US before the debt ceiling and CR issues are resolved signals that he is not on top of that. THAT will have a greater impact on how the US is viewed than whether Obama is at a largely ceremonial conference.

This is in the US media - at least in the NYT. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/03/world/asia/another-shutdown-victim-us-efforts-to-counter-china.html?_r=0

While it is true, that the President coming to a country is something that can not be done by anyone else. I disagree with the NYT that the new team is less versed on Asia.
Obama has Kerry, Biden and Hagel - who all have enormous foreign policy experience and connections. Kerry has more foreign policy experience on Asia than HRC did in 2009 and Hagel has far more foreign policy experience from his years on the SFRC than Gates did. The NYT is likely correct on Donelin vs Rice.

The NYT repeats that Kerry has made the middle east a priority, but ignores that he came into the job with a fantastic background for Asia. It is funny that they mention Hagel's Vietnam experience, but ignore that not only did Kerry fight as well, but he led the POW/MIA committee and he negotiated with Vietnam for that and was very involved with re-establishing relations there as a Senator. Not to mention, for the first few terms he was on (and for some of time) chaired an Asian sub committee. He proposed the method the US and Cambodia agreed to for war crime tribunals in Cambodia. He also went with Lugar, to oversee the election that got Marcos out of power. He also was very important to the negotiations at the Bali environmental conference in 2007, where a,ong other things he met with the Chinese delegation. Not to mention, though HRC's first trip was to Asia, Kerry has already gone to Asia once and is now going again - and he has only been SoS for 8 months.

In Biden, Obama has someone who was on the SFRC from 1973 to 2009 - and was chair at the end.

The CSM has a similar article - http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Asia-Pacific/2013/1003/Will-shortened-Obama-trip-to-Asia-buoy-China-video