Initial participants in the framework include major economies like Australia, India, Japan and South Korea as well as developing ones, including Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam.
May 23, 2022, 2:15 PM +07 / Updated May 23, 2022, 6:09 PM +07
By Alex Seitz-Wald, Elyse Perlmutter-Gumbiner and Jennifer Jett
WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden on Monday announced an economic agreement with a dozen other countries aimed at countering China’s influence in the Indo-Pacific, but which critics say may come as too little, too late to achieve that goal.
“The future of the 21st-century economy is going to be largely written in the Indo-Pacific, in our region,” Biden, in Tokyo on the second leg of his first presidential trip to Asia, said at a launch event for the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity.
“The nations represented here today and those who will join this framework in the future are signing up to work toward an economic vision that will deliver for all our people,” Biden said, “a vision for an Indo-Pacific that is free and open, connected and prosperous, and secure as well as resilient, where economic growth is sustainable and it’s inclusive.”
Along with the United States, initial participants in the framework include major economies — like Australia, India, Japan and South Korea — as well as developing ones, including Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam. They also include smaller countries like Brunei, New Zealand and Singapore.
Together, they represent about 40 percent of global gross domestic product, administration officials said.
by Taboola
Biden unveiled the pact at the Izumi Garden Gallery in Tokyo alongside Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.SAUL LOEB / AFP - Getty Images
“It is by any count the most significant international economic engagement that the United States has ever had in this region,” Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo told reporters ahead of the announcement.
The pact is about “restoring U.S. economic leadership in the region” and “presenting Indo-Pacific countries an alternative to China’s approach,” she added.
But critics say the framework is a belated and insufficient attempt to make up for America’s longtime lack of economic strategy in the region, a vacuum that has been filled by China.
Van Jackson, an American scholar of international relations at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand, called the framework “a slogan without a purpose.”
“We’ve been kind of derelict on economic policy,” he said. “This whole P.T. Barnum show around the framework is supposed to address that or show that we’re doing something about it, but when you peel back the onion none of the things that the region cares about are really there.”
The Biden administration’s relative lack of economic engagement in the region up to this point stands in contrast to its robust security efforts, including a new security pact with Australia and Britain and a greater focus on the Quad, an informal security grouping made up of the U.S., Australia, India and Japan.
Earlier on Monday, Biden commended Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s plans to strengthen his country’s defense capabilities and said the U.S. would support Japan becoming a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council. While in South Korea on the first part of his trip, Biden also said he and President Yoon Suk-yeol would discuss expanding joint military exercises.
Many Asian governments see the U.S. as an important security counterweight as China seeks to project greater strength around the region. But while Asian economies still seek access to the U.S. as an export market, they have largely relied on China as their engine of growth since the Asian financial crisis of 1997-98, Jackson said.
“This framework is not on trend with the region,” he said, though its symbolic nature also means it costs governments nothing to join."
China, the top trade partner for most of the countries participating in the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, has criticized it as intended to sow division, with Foreign Minister Wang Yi saying on Sunday that it was bound to fail.
May 23, 2022, 2:15 PM +07 / Updated May 23, 2022, 6:09 PM +07
By Alex Seitz-Wald, Elyse Perlmutter-Gumbiner and Jennifer Jett
WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden on Monday announced an economic agreement with a dozen other countries aimed at countering China’s influence in the Indo-Pacific, but which critics say may come as too little, too late to achieve that goal.
“The future of the 21st-century economy is going to be largely written in the Indo-Pacific, in our region,” Biden, in Tokyo on the second leg of his first presidential trip to Asia, said at a launch event for the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity.
“The nations represented here today and those who will join this framework in the future are signing up to work toward an economic vision that will deliver for all our people,” Biden said, “a vision for an Indo-Pacific that is free and open, connected and prosperous, and secure as well as resilient, where economic growth is sustainable and it’s inclusive.”
Along with the United States, initial participants in the framework include major economies — like Australia, India, Japan and South Korea — as well as developing ones, including Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam. They also include smaller countries like Brunei, New Zealand and Singapore.
Together, they represent about 40 percent of global gross domestic product, administration officials said.
by Taboola
“It is by any count the most significant international economic engagement that the United States has ever had in this region,” Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo told reporters ahead of the announcement.
The pact is about “restoring U.S. economic leadership in the region” and “presenting Indo-Pacific countries an alternative to China’s approach,” she added.
But critics say the framework is a belated and insufficient attempt to make up for America’s longtime lack of economic strategy in the region, a vacuum that has been filled by China.
Van Jackson, an American scholar of international relations at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand, called the framework “a slogan without a purpose.”
“We’ve been kind of derelict on economic policy,” he said. “This whole P.T. Barnum show around the framework is supposed to address that or show that we’re doing something about it, but when you peel back the onion none of the things that the region cares about are really there.”
The Biden administration’s relative lack of economic engagement in the region up to this point stands in contrast to its robust security efforts, including a new security pact with Australia and Britain and a greater focus on the Quad, an informal security grouping made up of the U.S., Australia, India and Japan.
Earlier on Monday, Biden commended Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s plans to strengthen his country’s defense capabilities and said the U.S. would support Japan becoming a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council. While in South Korea on the first part of his trip, Biden also said he and President Yoon Suk-yeol would discuss expanding joint military exercises.
Many Asian governments see the U.S. as an important security counterweight as China seeks to project greater strength around the region. But while Asian economies still seek access to the U.S. as an export market, they have largely relied on China as their engine of growth since the Asian financial crisis of 1997-98, Jackson said.
“This framework is not on trend with the region,” he said, though its symbolic nature also means it costs governments nothing to join."
China, the top trade partner for most of the countries participating in the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, has criticized it as intended to sow division, with Foreign Minister Wang Yi saying on Sunday that it was bound to fail.
Biden announces Indo-Pacific economic pact to counter China
Initial participants in the framework include major economies like Australia, India, Japan and South Korea as well as developing ones, including Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam.
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