It is possible to overstate the negative ramifications of this. But it would also be a mistake to underestimate the blow — at least in the short term — to the ability of the US to project a confident leadership role in the region. Headlines such as ‘As Obama’s Asian ‘pivot’ falters, China steps into the gap’ are all too representative of the reaction both within Asia and around the world.

In the immediate future, the image embodied in Hillary Clinton’s robust announcement of an American ‘pivot’ to Asia and her comment that ‘We are back to stay’ will take a credibility beating. The White House had planned both practical deliverables in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiations and also highly symbolic visits by the president to Malaysia and the Philippines. The image of President Obama twiddling his thumbs in the White House and haggling over a looming US default while Asian leaders meet in Bali and Brunei will be hard to erase in the short term.

Worse (though partly by coincidence), Chinese leaders were ready to fill in the gap. Long-planned, visits by President Xi Jinping to Malaysia and Indonesia captured headlines around the region, not least from the largesse dispensed along the way — a $US15 billion currency swap agreement with Indonesia and a promise to triple trade with Malaysia to $US160 billion by 2017. In a tag team display, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang is now off on follow-up official visits to Vietnam, Thailand and Brunei.

The potential impact of the US president’s no-show at TPP negotiations is another negative development but not one that will necessarily be fatal to the successful conclusion of the agreement. Since 2010, when serious bargaining began, there have been 19 negotiating sessions. By now, most if not all of the technicalities have been cleared away by the trade bureaucrats from the 12 member states. What is left is a group of at least a dozen highly sensitive political questions and judgments that must be settled by political leaders. Among the issues outstanding are rules and commitments related to state-owned enterprises (SOEs), the environment, labour, market access and rules of origin, and intellectual property.

Neither President Obama nor other national TPP leaders could be expected to iron out the specific details in the single day allotted to the TPP in Brunei. But what Obama did miss was the opportunity to personally push for a successful conclusion of the talks.

It will now be crucial for him to turn his full attention to the TPP endgame. In the coming weeks, the White House must quickly decide what its top offensive and defensive priorities will be. Will it demand, for example, quite detailed competition rules for SOEs? Will it want enforceable rules in the environmental chapter and for health and safety provisions? And will the US at this late date suddenly demand trade rules to curb currency manipulation? Defensively, the White House must make judgments on what it will give in return: for instance, Vietnam has made it clear that it will not move on SOEs without US concession on shoes and textiles. Further, what can the United States give on sugar or cotton? How much continued protection will it defend for the US automobile industry? And what can it concede from its highly protected dairy sector?

Political timing is vital. US companies with both offensive and defensive issues at stake are aware that it is crunch time for key decisions, and they have begun high-powered lobbying campaigns to achieve their disparate goals. While the administration has worked diligently with domestic stakeholders (including NGOs), it must redouble its own domestic political actions. This means moving forward quickly with Congress to pass new trade promotion authority that sets out congressional trade priorities, and guarantees a timely up or down vote for a future TPP agreement. The president himself must also be willing to spend the political capital to craft a coalition that can assure congressional approval of the TPP.

At a news conference in the wake of the Pacific summits, President Obama ruefully admitted that missing the Asian leaders’ meeting was ‘almost like not showing up’ for his own party, and that this inevitably ‘created a sense of concern’ on the part of US allies and trading partners. But on the larger canvass of US leadership in Asia, the damage is not irreparable. Despite the burst of Chinese triumphalism, Asian nations are certainly aware that Beijing has not backed off its belligerent stands and demands regarding the East and South Chinas seas — nor its bullying of smaller nations such as Vietnam and the Philippines. The ongoing, huge build-up of Chinese military prowess only underscores the perceived necessity for an enduring US defence presence as a counterbalance.

In addition to committing full diplomatic and political resources to completing and passing the TPP, the president should move to assuage the ‘sense of concern’ in Asia by quickly rescheduling the cancelled trips to Southeast Asia and add on Japan and Korea. For the TPP, there might be a quick payoff for the negotiations, as Korea was widely expected to announce at the Brunei summit that it would join the talks, but apparently backed off when Obama cancelled. A visit to Seoul might just seal that deal and further tip the balance toward the TPP as the lead institution in a new regional economic architecture.

Claude Barfield is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research.

A version of this article was first published here in The American