Japan, Canada and nine other Pacific Rim economies have offered a rebuke to Donald Trump, declaring they had solved their differences and would press on with an expansive new trade deal on the first anniversary of the US president’s withdrawal.
Mr Trump made pulling out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiated by the Obama administration one of his first official acts when he took office a year ago, a move that critics have called a strategic gift to China.
But in a sign of how the rest of the world is ready to move on without the US, the 11 remaining countries announced on Tuesday that they would go ahead and sign the agreement in Chile on March 8 after overcoming last-minute objections from Canada.
