Biden to lay out in Japan who's joining new Asia trade pact
TOKYO (AP) — President Joe Biden on Monday is set to launch a new Indo-Pacific trade pact designed to signal U.S. dedication to the region and address the need for stability in commerce after the chaos caused by the pandemic and Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
The White House says the new Indo-Pacific Economic Framework will help the United States and Asian economies work more closely on issues including supply chains, digital trade, clean energy, worker protections and anticorruption efforts. The details still need to be negotiated among the member countries, making it difficult for the administration to say how this framework can fulfill the promise of helping U.S. workers and businesses while also meeting global needs.
Countries signing on to the framework were to be announced Monday during Biden's visit to Tokyo for talks with Prime Minister Fumio Kishida. It's the latest step by the Biden administration to try to preserve and broaden U.S. influence in a region that until recently looked to be under the growing sway of China.
Biden is in the midst of a five-day visit to South Korea and Japan — the first trip to Asia of his presidency — that wraps on Tuesday. The White House announced plans to build the economic framework in October as a replacement for the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which the U.S. dropped out of in 2017 under then-President Donald Trump.
The new pact comes at a moment when the administration believes it has the edge in its competition with Beijing. Bloomberg Economics published a report last week projecting U.S. GDP growth at about 2.8% in 2022 compared to 2% for China, which has been trying to contain the coronavirus through strict lockdowns while also dealing with a property bust. The slowdown has undermined assumptions that China would automatically supplant the U.S. as the world's leading...
