America needs a new Asia-Pac economic strategy - trade liberalisation

THE Biden administration in the US is poised to unveil its first comprehensive economic strategy for the Asia-Pacific. The so-called "Indo-Pacific Economic Framework" is a move long anticipated by US allies and Corporate America.

That President Joe Biden and his policy aides would present a coherent set of principles in guiding their economic policies in the Asia-Pacific is certainly good news after years of administrations that seemed to be responding in an ad-hoc and sometimes chaotic fashion to developments in the region. This was especially so under Biden's predecessor. The move also reflects a growing consensus in Washington that China has emerged as America's main geo-strategic and geo-economic challenge. Much of what is considered to be US policy in Asia has been placed under the rubric of "containing China".

The irony is that in 2017, the United States decided to leave a regional economic framework - the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) - that provided it with the structure that would have allowed it to deepen its trade and investment ties with countries in the region, along with helping to design a set of rules and a mechanism to counterbalance China's influence.