Tokyo (Reuters) – On Monday, President Joe Biden announced his plan for U.S. economic engagement in Asia. He left it up to the 13 founding countries to figure out how to enforce their agreements and if China could ever join.
Biden will present the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity (IPEF) in Tokyo on his first trip as vice president to Asia.
The White House says that the deal doesn’t give India, Malaysia, and the Philippines any tariff relief, but it does give them a way to talk about important issues like climate change, supply chain resilience, and digital trade.
Since former President Donald Trump pulled out of a multilateral trans-Pacific trade agreement, Washington hasn’t had a strong economic base in the Indo-Pacific. This has given its biggest rival, China, more room to grow its influence.
At a launch event in Tokyo, “The future of the 21st-century economy will be written in large part in the Indo-Pacific, which is our region.” “We’re making the rules for the future.”
Biden wants the deal to raise standards in Asia for the environment, work, and other things. Australia, Brunei, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, New Zealand, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, and the United States were also among the first founders.
But officials told reporters that the founding countries will need to talk about what standards they want to follow, how they will be enforced, whether their own legislatures will need to ratify them, and how to think about potential new members like China.
Thai Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-Ocha, who joined the launch event by video, said, “This will make it easier to get money and technology.” “It’s still a work in progress, and there are going to be more in-depth talks about it soon.”
U.S. Gina Raimondo, the Secretary of Commerce, told reporters that the IPEF gives Asian countries “an alternative to how China handles these important issues.”
China has said that it has no desire to join IPEF. A U.S. official said that many of the rules that Washington wants would turn Beijing off to such a deal.
Taiwan, which also wanted to join, was also left out of the first round of talks.
Jake Sullivan, Biden’s national security adviser, told reporters on Air Force One that Taiwan would not be part of the IPEF launch, but that Washington wants to strengthen economic ties with the self-governing island that China claims.
The IPEF is an attempt to get back some of the benefits of being a part of a bigger trade deal like the one Trump left, which is now called the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPA-TPP) but was called TPP before.
“TPP, as it was planned, was in the end something very fragile,” said U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai said that some people were worried that the deal would put U.S. jobs at risk. “The hardest part was that we didn’t have enough help from home to get through it.”
China put in an application in September to join what will replace TPP. And when Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida met privately with U.S. Vice President Joe Biden on Monday, he said he told Biden that the U.S. should get back into the trade deal.
Beijing seemed to not like the idea of the IPEF.
China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi said in a statement that China supports efforts to improve cooperation in the region but is against “efforts to create division and confrontation.” “The Asia-Pacific should not be used as a geopolitical gladiator arena, but as a high ground for peaceful development.”
Taiwan wants to join the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework with the U.S., and Sullivan says the U.S. wants to strengthen its economic relationship with Taiwan.