New Zealand Prime Minister John Key has landed in Peru for what he has described as the most important Apec he has attended because of Mr Trump's stance on free trade.
Mr Trump will not be in Peru, but early on Sunday morning (NZ time) Mr Key will attend a meeting of the leaders of the 12 countries in the TPP to discuss the agreement's Post-Trump future.
After lower-level meetings, US President Barack Obama, Chinese President Xi Jinping, and Russian President Vladimir Putin were due to arrive at the summit that brings together leaders whose economies represent 57% of global gross domestic product.
While campaigning for the presidential election which he won, Mr Trump labeled the TPP a job-killing "disaster" and called for curbs on immigration and steeper tariffs on products from China and Mexico.
Though Obama championed the TPP as a way to counter China's rise, his administration has now stopped trying to win congressional approval for the deal that was signed by 12 economies in the Americas and Asia-Pacific, but excluded China. Without US approval the agreement as currently negotiated cannot come to fruition.
John Key says it is possibly the most important Apec Summit he had been to in his eight years as leader.
The grouping of 21 economies had consistently been in favour of free trade and had a long standing goal of a free trade area across the Asia Pacific.
"Now for the first time ever really, we've got the United States under President-elect Trump going into a very different space."
Mr Key said he would urge the other leaders to maintain the agreement even if the US dropped out.
New Zealand does not currently have a free trade agreement with Japan and the TPP was a way to secure that as well.
"If we can't get there with the United States, Japan would still be worth it."
Mr Key said he was still hopeful Mr Trump could be talked around, saying what was said on the campaign trail often differed from reality in government.
"I mean it wasn't that many weeks ago that Donald Trump didn't have terribly nice things to say about Mitt Romney and Mitt Romney didn't have very nice things to say about Donald Trump. If you believe the media, they're meeting this weekend.
So he hasn't had great things to say about TPP but maybe with some coercion and maybe with some changes we could agree to ... maybe it's possible to get him there."
Mr Key does not have formal meetings with the super power leaders Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping or Barack Obama. However, he did expect to get some time on the margins with them.
He will also be trying to get a word with Japan's PM Shinzo Abe. Mr Abe was the first world leader to meet with Donald Trump in person and Mr Key will want Abe's take on whether Mr Trump can be budged on the TPP.
Mr Key said he would also raise Japan's decision this week to send its whaling boats to the Southern Ocean - a step Foreign Minister Murray McCully has criticised.
Mr Key expected to catch up with Australia's Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull for a drink at some point.
He will also meet fellow TPP leaders, Peru's President Pedro Pablo Kuczynskil and Chile's Michelle Bachelet, as well as Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who is facing Mr Trump's pledge to renegotiate the long standing NAFTA agreement between Mexico, Canada and the US as well as the TPP.
- By Claire Trevett of the New Zealand Herald, Reuters
