 Well Xi Jinping introduced the Belt and Road Initiative in 2013 and he was quite explicit at the time that that was to counter the TPP and so we can see that as a very clear geo-economic strategy to try and gain some geo-political impact in the region. Since that time the Belt and Road Initiative has gained considerable momentum. He's now signed cooperative agreements with I think 100 countries or more. He was down here visiting in Australia or Lika Chung was down visiting in Australia and hoping to sign a formal agreement with the Australian government to align the BRI with our own North Australia infrastructure project which we decided to decline but in any case there's certainly a huge movement in in this BRI strategy which which I describe as a transnational grand development strategy with very Chinese characteristics. If you look carefully at the BRI and what it contains there are a number of elements to it that are fundamentally incompatible with free trade. This is a state-run state-led initiative it's to be implemented by a multi-faceted multi-layered state. It's dominated by state-owned enterprises and it's underpinned by Chinese state finance which one very prominent Chinese banker has described as the servant of China's national strategic interests. So all of these elements have Chinese characteristics if I can use that term again and they are essentially not compatible with the international economic order as we know it. The word that springs to mind is catastrophic particularly if that protectionist policy was directed at the world's second largest economy, China. The cost to the Chinese economy would be immeasurable somewhat ironically the benefits to the United States I would expect to be rather small. You know you're more likely if you put up tariff barriers against the Chinese economy then factories in China and I've already heard some of them talk about this that they would be pushed into an unprofitable position there and would then start looking to relocate into China's neighbouring countries so countries like Bangladesh, Vietnam and India could stand to do quite well out of a protectionist policy but in aggregate it's economics 101 free trade enlarges the pie there are winners and losers in each country but overall the aggregate hit to the regional economy of the Asia-Pacific region would be substantial. I haven't done the measurements but they don't really warrant thinking about. Since Trump's withdrawal from the TPP we've seen quite a lot of action in Australia Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull was quite vocal about the idea that the TPP could proceed without the United States and that China could even possibly join. I don't think that's a particularly likely outcome but the Japanese, the Koreans, a lot of people are thinking now more carefully about other sorts of trading agreements like the regional comprehensive economic partnership with 12 economies in the region to try and uphold those principles of free trade but we're also seeing other responses to sort of counteract China's BRI strategy so for example the Japanese have announced a huge infrastructure project in the same space that China is seeking to invest in and of course there's a competition that is good for all of the economies that benefit from the investments coming in from both of those countries. Similarly India is now having an Act East policy and that has been explicitly described in the Indian media as an effort to counterbalance China's growing importance in the region.