Yokohama is the president’s final stop on a 10-day, four-nation journey that took him to India, Indonesia and South Korea. In the wake of the battering his party took in the midterm elections at home last week, Mr. Obama has cast his Asia trip as mission to revive the American economy and bolster job growth.
But his policies, contentious at home, have proved contentious overseas as well, and he faced stiff challenges during the Group of 20 gathering in Seoul, South Korea, from the leaders of China, Britain, Germany and Brazil over currency policy and his contention that the United States could pump money into its economy to stimulate growth before concentrating on reducing the deficit.
During a news conference on Friday afternoon in Seoul, Mr. Obama attributed the conflict to his administration’s efforts to even out global trade imbalances, by pressing other nations to accept numerical targets for limiting trade surpluses or deficits. In the end, the leaders of the world’s 20 most affluent economies drafted a communiqué that fell short of Mr. Obama’s goal, leaving most of the work on creating ways to monitor and correct such imbalances for future meetings.
“Part of the reason that sometimes it seems as if the United States is attracting some dissent is because we’re initiating ideas,” the president said at the news conference in Seoul. “We’re putting them forward. The easiest thing for us to do would be to take a passive role and let things just drift, which wouldn’t cause any conflict. But we thought it was important for us to put forward more structure to this idea of balanced and sustained growth. And some countries pushed back.”
So there you go. Failing to get cooperation from other countries this year isn't because we are distracted and doing what we want--it's that we're paying attention and asking nations to cooperate with us.
