TOKYO (AFP) — While surveys show most of the world is rooting for Barack Obama, the Democrat may face a more cautious reception from leaders in East Asia who fear he will press them harder on trade issues.
Obama, who leads polls ahead of Tuesday's election against Republican John McCain, has generated plenty of enthusiasm among ordinary people in East Asia with his message of change after eight years of President George W. Bush.
But despite Bush's dismal approval ratings at home and abroad, governments and businesses in Japan, South Korea and, to an extent, China have welcomed his free-trade instincts and are holding their breath on Obama.
Last week, Beijing complained after Obama accused China of manipulating its currency's value to fuel its huge trade surplus with the United States.
In one sharp difference with McCain, Obama opposed a free-trade agreement between the United States and South Korea, which Bush and Seoul leaders have championed despite opposition in both countries.
"The Democrats' protectionist bent is being amplified by the ongoing global economic crisis. If Obama is elected president, trade frictions between the US and South Korea would intensify," said Lee Si-Wook of the state-financed Korea Development Institute.
Obama, who enjoys backing of trade unions, argues that the deal gives US car makers too little access to the South Korean market, where American models have trailed behind domestic, Japanese and European brands.
South Korea has ruled out renegotiation of the deal, which set off mass street protests in Seoul over concerns about US beef imports.
McCain supports the deal with Seoul, saying that it would create jobs and that rejecting it now would "undermine America's global economic leadership" in the midst of the global financial crisis.
Tokyo-based scholar Robert Dujarric predicted that Obama could eventually support the deal with South Korea if there were "cosmetic" changes.
He said that any new president would have less clout to push Asia on trade due to the US-bred financial crisis and deeply unpopular US policies in Iraq and elsewhere.
"I think post-crisis US power will reassert itself but it will take a few years," said Dujarric, director of the Institute of Contemporary Japanese Studies at Temple University in Tokyo.
He noted that China's communist leaders have often felt more with pro-business Republicans, seeing the Democrats as too influenced by human rights campaigners.
In Japan, some leaders still have a bitter taste in their mouth from the last Democratic president, Bill Clinton, who pressed the world's second largest economy to open up to US imports in the middle of its long recession.
But the Bush administration said little publicly about the weakness of the yen throughout much of the past eight years, which helped Japan's economy recover by making Japanese exports more competitive.
Japan's economy is again on shaky ground now as US demand slumps and after the yen soared to a 13-year high against the dollar due to the global financial crisis.
Susumu Doihara, senior economist at the Tokyo-based NLI Research Institute think tank, doubted Obama would take the same hard line as Clinton with Japan -- but said Obama might get tougher on China.
"China will remain the biggest rival with the US. An Obama administration may seek a way to expand US exports to China," he said.
But Doihara saw Obama as a pragmatist, noting that his primary interest was in reviving the ailing US economy.
"If free trade frameworks affect the job situation in the United States, he may take action. But he is likely to actively welcome foreign companies that create jobs in the US," he said.
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