It is a comprehensive plan designed to help expand US economic leadership in the Indo-Pacific region. The group wants to set international rules for the digital economy, supply chains, decarbonization and workers.
Most importantly, IPEF is not a free trade agreement. US President Joe Biden is facing political pressure in the US from both the left and the right to avoid free trade agreements.
US Security Adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters on Sunday that the agreement is also not a security agreement and is separate from the four defense groups that include the United States, Japan, India and Australia.
Despite avoiding trade agreements, the United States wants to increase its weight in the Asian economy, where China is the dominant country, despite the fact that the two American allies, Japan and South Korea, boast large economies, and India, a member of the Quartet, is growing by leaps and bounds.
The United States “needs to increase its economic competitiveness in the region,” said Ali Wen, a global macro analyst at Eurasia Group.
“Even countries that have significant and growing concerns about China’s foreign policy and strategic objectives realize that they will not be able to become fundamentally independent of their economy in the short term,” Wen said. provides maximum attractiveness to the Pacific economic framework.”
Biden is in Tokyo this week to meet with regional leaders. US officials were careful not to mention China in the IPEF talks and denied that it would be a “closed” group, as China has claimed.
China’s state-controlled Global Times wrote on Saturday that “the main purpose of Biden’s trip to South Korea and Japan is to try to create a new political focus on China by creating an alliance around Washington in the Asia-Pacific region.”
Sullivan told reporters on Sunday that he was not surprised “that China has concerns about the number and diversity of countries expressing interest and enthusiasm for the International Football Forum (IPEF).”
Cover Photo: Getty Images
