It’s that time of year again, time for the State of the Union, the annual speech where the president of the United States proclaims the state of the union and outlines legislative priorities.

But did current US President, Barak Obama really prioritise and then address one of the key issues facing the US, the troubled global economy? He did not.

President Obama kept us all waiting for any mention of the world economy and did not even refer to the Asia-Pacific region, the world’s engine of growth, until about half way into his speech, when he said: “Today, our businesses export more than ever, and exporters tend to pay their workers higher wages. But as we speak, China wants to write the rules for the world's fastest-growing region. That would put our workers and businesses at a disadvantage. … We should write those rules.”

Obama claimed the US is “modernizing alliances” across the Asia-Pacific region. But gave no specific mention of any particular “alliance” and no explanation of what he meant by “modernising”. If the Americans are to be believed and are true to their supposed core values of “peace” and “stability” then surely some detailed discussion is required on the way forward towards an effective Sino-US economic relationship.

At the most recent APEC meeting in Beijing in November, 2014, the Chinese government proposed an ambitious but perfectly attainable vision for a Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific across the entire Asia-Pacific region. Surely the State of the Union speech is the perfect opportunity for the US to support such a modernising and stabilising initiative? In so doing Obama could also have effectively drawn a line under the US-led Trans-Pacific Partnership, which has always sought to undermine real economic integration in this most important region and quite simply aims to preserve and enhance any lingering US regional dominance.

Shortly before Obama’s briefest of the brief Asia-Pacific commentary he had the audacity to declare that “we [the US] are demonstrating the power of American strength and diplomacy. We’re upholding the principle that bigger nations can’t bully the small…”. This was breathtakingly hypocritical.