Tokyo, Sept. 8 (BNA): Economic ministers from the United States and 13 Indo-Pacific nations Thursday began negotiations on the first major pan-Asian trade engagement effort in Washington in nearly a decade, but this time it won’t cut any deal. customs fees. .
The Indo-Pacific Economic Framework Talks in Los Angeles will seek to define a comprehensive platform for market-driven economies to engage in trade and data flows, environmental and labor standards, supply chains and anti-corruption efforts, Reuters reports.
The negotiations will be led by US Trade Representative Catherine Taye and Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo. President Joe Biden launched the Indo-Pacific Initiative in May during a trip to Tokyo, but some critics have questioned its value to participating countries.
Not TPP 2.0
Washington has lacked an economic underpinning for its involvement in the Indo-Pacific since former President Donald Trump withdrew from the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement in 2017, leaving room for China to expand its regional influence.
More than two years of Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations led to an agreement in 2015, but the US Congress failed to ratify it because free trade agreements to cut tariffs were not in favor, and it was blamed for draining jobs and investment in low-wage countries.
Biden’s chief trade officer Taye has also avoided new trade deals, focusing a number of negotiations with the European Union instead on labor, regulation and other non-tariff issues.
The talks will include ministers from Australia, Brunei, Fiji, India, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. Together with the United States, participants account for about 40% of global GDP.
But it was not clear whether all countries would participate in all four negotiation tracks: trade, labor and digital standards. Clean energy and decarbonization. supply chain flexibility; tax and anti-corruption efforts. To secure broad participation, countries can choose among those “pillars”.
The talks come as the China-led Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) free trade agreement was launched in January, cutting tariffs on many IPEF participants. The remaining TPP countries also launched a limited trade agreement.
A senior Biden administration official told reporters Wednesday that the IPEF platform was not intended as an alternative to trade with China.
“This initiative is really about having a positive US economic agenda in the region,” the official said. “It’s about engaging the economies of the Indo-Pacific per se, and that’s not an option between the US and China.”
Lori Wallach, president of Rethink Trade, a group that advocates against corporate influence in trade policy, applauded the decision not to introduce tariff cuts, but questioned whether it could offer benefits to workers.
“Three decades of ‘hyper-globalization’ implemented by these deals have rendered the old business model politically toxic,” Wallach said in a statement. “Then the supply chain crisis revealed by the coronavirus fueled demand for a new approach that reflects the concentration of the goods and services on which we all depend in companies in very few countries.”