U.S. President Joe Biden. Photo: Xinhua News Agency
On September 8-9, local time, the first Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF) ministerial meeting will open in Los Angeles, USA, which is also the first ministerial face-to-face meeting since the framework was officially launched in May.
Negotiations have been slow for four months
Some analysts used the term "two thirteen plus one" to summarize the IPEF ministerial meeting.
The first "thirteen plus one" refers to the fourteen member states participating in the meeting, including thirteen founding member states, namely Australia, Brunei, India, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, the United States, and later Fiji, which later joined; The second "thirteen plus one" refers to the United States and the remaining thirteen countries, and the basic demands and goals are very different.
IPEF was the highlight of U.S. President Joe Biden's first visit to Asia in May, officially announced in Japan. The idea of this framework Wasen was laid out as early as the East Asia Summit in October 2021. The framework encompasses the so-called "four pillars", namely fair trade, resilient supply chains, infrastructure and clean energy, fighting corruption and tax avoidance.
According to the interpretation of the U.S. government, member states are free to choose to participate in any one or more of the "Four Pillars", of which the Office of the United States Trade Representative will be responsible for negotiating fair trade measures and the other three will be the responsibility of the United States Department of Commerce.
Negotiations on the IPEF framework have been slow since May, with more details expected from the outside world not being disclosed. Although member states held low-level talks in Singapore in mid-July and the first virtual ministerial meeting at the end of July, the gist of the matter remained elusive.
Government officials in Japan, the most actively involved in IPEF affairs outside the United States, revealed that the face-to-face ministerial meeting at the Los Angeles hotel is expected to determine which "pillar" negotiations all member countries will specifically participate in, and may be announced in the post-meeting document.
On May 23, 2022, local time, Tokyo, Japan, US President Joe Biden officially announced the launch of the "Indo-Pacific Economic Framework". Figure/IC photo
The Center for Strategic and International Studies, a U.S. think tank, said the Biden administration wants negotiations on all relevant "pillars" to end within a year, up to 18 months, and that the November 2023 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit is seen as an "informal deadline" for the IPEF agreement. Some anxious U.S. government officials and aides who have contributed ideas and suggestions hope to "see early results" in trade and supply chains.
"You want the horses to run, but you want the horses not to eat grass"
The response to IPEF's important first high-level face-to-face meeting, whether in the United States or other member states, appeared to be tepid, and the reasons for this seemingly identical attitude were very different.
Smith, director of international economic policy at the U.S. Action Forum, a research institute, and others pointed out that the essence of IPEF is that Biden hopes to introduce a framework that can both eliminate the negative impact of Trump's "America First" trade and business rules in the Indo-Pacific region in the context of the domestic political atmosphere in the United States that is no longer enthusiastic about "globalization" and "free trade".
Simply put, Biden expects that the United States, through IPEF, can gain the advantages of other countries opening their markets to the United States and accepting U.S. trade rules and rules without making concessions such as opening up the U.S. market to other participating countries and eliminating tariff and non-tariff barriers. To sum it up in a common saying, it is "both for the horse to run and for the horse not to eat grass" to be heard.
U.S. Trade Representative Dai Qi, who is most active in promoting the "landing" of IPEF, has made it clear that the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative does not intend to remove U.S. tariff barriers as a key point in the IPEF framework talks.
Smith has said that "if the IPEF is not a trade agreement and does not include provisions for the United States to lower tariffs and non-tariff barriers so that other participating countries can benefit, other countries are unlikely to have a positive response." Other skeptics have their own reasons, such as many members of Congress arguing that IPEF circumvents congressional involvement in a "dodgy" way of "non-trade agreements" (no trade agreement requires approval by the legislature, but only intergovernmental negotiations).
Questions about the IPEF framework in other Member States have become more and more frequent as time passes and the details of the framework continue to blur.
Southeast Asian countries have generally shown reluctance to use IPEF to force them to "take sides" between china and the United States, its two largest trading partners, which has also forced the United States to downplay the arguments that prompt countries to "take sides" recently.
India, which has made huge gains in the transnational digital services sector, is highly wary of the United States' attempts to use IPEF to "regulate" digital access standards, as it fears the move will force India to weaken its government's efforts to protect the multinational digital services sector.
South Korea has repeatedly said it will "make all the priorities for how to participate in THE IPEF" with the maximization of its own interests.
60% of South Korean chips are exported to the Chinese market. Figure/IC photo
Paul Nado, an adjunct professor of political science at Temple University Japan, recently pointed out that unless the Biden administration changes course and proposes "enough temptations" including the opening of its own market and tariff concessions, the Los Angeles talks will be just "trade discussions of limited value." The whimsy of "asking the horses to run and the horses not to graze" is "bad news" for the United States' efforts to expand its economic influence in Asia.
Against this complex backdrop, it is difficult to determine whether this "face-to-face" ministerial meeting will give IPEF a clearer, or more vague vision.
Squeezing Out China from Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation is futile
Parritt, a senior fellow at the National University of Singapore's Institute of South Asian Studies, believes that "IPEF and regional free trade agreements (RCEP) are not necessarily competitors".
This view largely reflects the will of the overwhelming majority of IPEF Member States. Most of them have participated in the RCEP with the nature of a typical free trade agreement and are "in the same frame" with China, and have also signed the IPEF, which has so far obscure details, but with obvious Biden and American colors, of course, hoping that these two frameworks are "not exclusive", and they can make profits between the two major economies in both directions, without becoming victims of trade wars and "consumables".
For China, which is deliberately excluded from the IPEF framework, the most active and prudent response is "to be invincible first, to wait for the enemy to win", that is, to create self-favorable conditions first.
RCEP is the greatest common interest between China and its partners in the Asia-Pacific region, and it is also the most powerful weapon to "hedge" the attractiveness and "lethality" of IPEF. In the face of the complex international situation, we must have a sense of mission and urgency to resume and develop normal economic activities among ourselves and between ourselves and other international partners as soon as possible.
Facts have proved that under the circumstance that China has developed so far, has become a major global and regional country, has become an important link in the international industrial chain and the world's largest trading body, any external force that wants to squeeze China out of Asia-Pacific regional economic cooperation is doomed to be futile.
Written by / Tao Short Room (Columnist)
Editor / Yunyun Liu
Proofreading / Chen Diyan