It has been raining trade deals.

The U.K.’s Keir Starmer has agreed to closer trade ties with China’s Xi Jinping. The European Union and India have signed "the mother of all deals.” That was after the EU’s mega-deal with Mercosur. Canada’s Mark Carney struck a "new strategic partnership” with China. And Germany’s leaders are also beating a path to Beijing.

Everywhere you look, key trade blocs and powerful countries are pivoting from the U.S. administration’s mercurial foreign and trade policies in an effort to build more stable relationships. Everyone is doing it — except the African Union. While others are taking up Carney’s celebrated Davos challenge to come together or end up "on the menu,” African countries — some as small as Lesotho, population 2.3 million — are signing bilateral deals with powerful world powers such as the U.S. and China without consulting or seeking guidance from their neighbors or wielding the collective heft of a regional or continental combination.

© The Japan Times