About 13 nations have joined the new Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, a new US-led Asia-Pacific trade initiative which is being positioned against China’s aggressive expansion in the region. The US President, Joe Biden informed that America, Japan along with 11 other countries will form the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity, or IPEF. “This framework is a commitment to working with our close friends and partners in the region on challenges that matter most to ensuring economic competitiveness in the 21st century,” he said.
He did not say what countries had already signed up to IPEF, which the White House is billing as a framework for what will ultimately become a tight-knit group of trading nations.
Unlike traditional trade blocs, there is no plan for IPEF members to negotiate tariffs and ease market access — a tool that has become increasingly unpalatable to US voters fearful of undermining homegrown manufacturing.
Instead, the programme foresees integrating partners through agreed standards in four main areas: the digital economy, supply chains, clean energy infrastructure and anti-corruption measures.
Biden has pushed to rapidly rebuild strategic military and trade alliances weakened under his predecessor Donald Trump since taking office in 2021.
IPEF is intended to offer US allies an alternative to China’s growing commercial presence across the Asia-Pacific. However, there is no political will in Washington for returning to a tariffs-based Asia trade deal following Trump’s 2017 withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership — a huge trading bloc that was revived, without US membership, in 2018 as the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership.
