It is too early to say what the Trump administration’s trade policy will look like – but a total cut-off from Asian partners is unlikely. It would harm the US economy, and offer China even more scope to cement its position in Asia. Nevertheless, with TPP and TTIP both looking unlikely, the EU should move fast to build relationships with China and ASEAN countries.

Globalization is always an evolving process, with inevitable ups and downs and not moving in a linear fashion. Despite populist reservations in the US and UK, the international community has become intertwined and interdependent, thanks to global free trade and investment. Cooperation to tackle global challenges will continue while more efforts will address the “global governance deficiency” in promoting social justice and fairness such the widening gap between rich and poor both domestically and among nations.

There is little evidence that an undervalued renminbi played a major role in driving China’s trade surpluses over the past decade. Likewise, a causal relationship between the U.S. trade deficits and China’s surplus has been assumed that is not true. Structural shifts, not an undervalued exchange rate, were the major factors driving China’s export capabilities. However, political systems need to find ways to address local interests without giving up the benefits that globalization can bring.

Trump is not ideologically driven and is less biased against China than Clinton, with business ties booming with Chinese partners. Without such ties, US domestic statistics suggest, the US economy would shrink by one-third and prices would go up by one-third — undermining US status as the heart of global financial system. This is a price that the US could ill-afford, and Trump is pretty strong on math.

The combined effects of globalization and technological change caused “deindustrialization” across a wide swath of the United States. Deindustrialization is responsible for making good paying manufacturing jobs requiring low to medium skills scarce, eviscerating the middle class in certain regions, and stoking political resentment—a major issue for workers both in the U.S. and China.

Trump’s security and diplomatic policies may offer opportunities for China, but that would be secondary compared with the damage he may inflict on China-US economic and financial relations. The China-US economic and financial relationship means a lot to the Chinese economic health at home, especially in the face of the nativism, populism and nationalism that seems to be sweeping the globe.

With the election of Donald Trump to the White House, the Obama Administration has finally accepted the inevitable and has announced that it will cease efforts to push the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) forward in the waning days of the Lame Duck session. Over the long term, Washington will need to re-assert its trade presence in the Asia-Pacific region. The supply chains are too interwoven and interdependent for the U.S. to go at it alone, despite the isolationist rhetoric emanating from the U.S. election.

Traditional hands-off posture toward foreign entanglements could well be the hallmark of the incoming administration, as it pursues the new president’s call to put “America first”. It remains to be seen whether that is a formula for isolation or trade wars in the modern era.

Donald Trump’s ascension to the presidency in 2017 will also make him the new commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces, with a large say over the question of war and peace in the next four years. While some see his strongman style as reminiscent of Theodore Roosevelt’s Gunboat Diplomacy, there are too many known unknowns about Trump’s defense policies to predict how he would react in the event of war or a perceived threat.

A president-elect’s promises and actual policies are always two different things. “Putting America first”, Trump’s chief consideration, means that a quick expansion of the U.S. role in international affairs doesn’t look likely in the near future. But remarkable shrinkage in U.S. diplomatic and military activities in the world will not happen very soon either.