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American leader visits internationally have typically been an occasion to display the influence of the US on the world stage. Trump's week-long trip through East Asia, by contrast, has been a display of the power of Trump – but also, at moments, of that influence's constraints.

Trump's destinations in Malaysia, Japan and Korea over the course of the initial days were an display in pleasing a occasionally volatile president. It was an admission that the leader, with the flick of a document, could enact taxes and further steps that have the capacity to harm the financial systems of trade-reliant countries.

His discussion with Beijing's head Xi on Thursday, however, was a completely different scenario.

It was a session of counterparts on the world platform, where the risks for each country – for their economies, for their international prestige, for the well-being of their populations – were significant.

With China, the US leader may flick his pen, but such actions involve consequences. They involve a cost.

• The US president praises 'impressive' meeting with the Chinese leader but no agreement reached
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For the opening segment, the president's most recent venture into global diplomacy was successful.

Each visit was marked by a combination of standard commercial discussions – arrangements made under the shadow of the president's "mutual" tariffs – and individual concessions that at points verged on the deferential.

In the Malaysian stop, the president obtained entry to key materials and made progress toward concluding trade arrangements with south-east Asian nations. He also oversaw a treaty that should reduce frontier issues between Thailand and Cambodia – the sort of "truce" the American president loves to promote.

In the Japanese leg, the president's Marine One passed by a Tokyo Tower displayed US flag colors – with a summit in golden.

Recently chosen Head the Japanese leader outlined $550 billion in Tokyo's funding in the America and gave the president a gift of a quarter-thousand cherry trees for America's 250th birthday, and a sports gear and carrier that came from the late leader, the assassinated former prime minister who bonded with Trump in his previous administration.

She also became the newest foreign leader to suggest Trump for his highly-coveted peace award.

Matching the effort, the Korean government received Trump with cannons discharging a honor salute and a service ensemble that performed Hail to the Chief and the Village People song – the band anthem that has become a political gathering anthem.

Leader Lee Jae Myung held an "recognition ritual" for the US leader during which he gave the US president his state's premier award and a copy of an ancient Korean dynastic crown.

Noon repast with the Korean leader featured a "Conciliatory Treat" of gold-encrusted chocolate squares. Later that day, the South Koreans provided Trump vineyard wine at an exclusive gathering in Trump's recognition with half-dozen global figures present at the Asia-Pacific Economic Conference conference.

In the US, Trump may be the target of "Anti-Monarchy" demonstrations by the public who reject his limit-pushing expansions of executive authority, but during his regional tour he was received as royalty.

And like the monarchs of ancient times, Trump arrived in the Korean nation demanding contribution – in the form of $two hundred billion in financial transfers, $twenty billion a year, from the host nation to the America, to be invested at the direction of the president's government. Agreement on the details of those transfers helped ensure that the tax percentage on Korean products to the America would fall from a quarter to under twenty percent.

The main event of the president's regional visit occurred in its concluding phase, though, as he encountered the Chinese leader.

At that location, the authority balance between heads of the planet's biggest economic powers was decidedly different than the interactions Trump had with his overseas colleagues in earlier stops.

Missing were typical pageantry and the pageantry. No military bands, no protocol units, without meticulously designed meal plans celebrating bilateral friendship. Instead, the two leaders and their key staff were seated across a long white discussion surface in a plain military building just off the runway of the southern port's air transport hub.

It was perhaps a reflection of the significant risks that when Trump shook hands with Xi in Busan, he seemed