US President Barack Obama's landmark Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement was already on life support before his successor, Donald Trump, promised American voters worried by the impact of globalization that he would kill it and bury it.

Now that the Republican-dominated Congress has announced it will not discuss ratification of the TPP during the remainder of Obama's term, all that is left for the outgoing president to do is to read the funeral oration for the proposed Pacific Rim trade pact that had been the keystone of his administration's so-called "pivot to Asia" strategy.

That may come when Obama joins other leaders for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting in Lima, Peru, on Saturday and Sunday.