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U.S., Japan to rebuild trade ties with new forum, meetings
Reuters: The United States and Japan are set to begin new talks to address concerns over U.S. "Section 232" national security tariffs on steel and aluminum and curbing global excess capacity for the metals largely centered in China. The talks follow a U.S. quota deal with the European Union to allow around 4 million tons of EU-produced steel duty-free into the United States annually.
Japan has also sought to negotiate a broader agreement with the United States after striking a limited trade deal with former President Donald Trump in 2019 that staved off his threat of higher duties on imported cars, and to coax Washington into returning to a Pacific Rim trade pact.
USTR said the new partnership instead would focus on addressing labor and environmental-related priorities, trade facilitation, a supportive digital ecosystem and cooperation in regional and multilateral trade forums, the latter a reference to the World Trade Organization, which holds a major ministerial meeting at the end of November in Geneva.
The Biden administration is working to rebuild trade ties with allies that became strained during Trump's presidency, with the aim of building a broader coalition to confront China's subsidies and other state-driven economic policies.
The USTR statement mentioned such "third country concerns" as a focus of the new group.
It said the partnership would be chaired by USTR and Japan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Ministry of Economy, Industry and Trade.
U.S. aims for 'flexible and inclusive' Indo-Pacific framework
NikkeiAsia: U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo on Thursday said the new economic framework that her country plans to launch for Indo-Pacific will be "flexible and inclusive," concluding a trip to Asia designed to help Washington deepen ties with the region.
Speaking in a media teleconference from Kuala Lumpur -- the last stop of her four-day regional tour after Tokyo and Singapore -- Raimondo said the new framework will focus on areas including supply chain, digital economy and infrastructure. "We intend for the framework to be flexible and inclusive so that many different countries can participate."
She said her trip this week -- during which she met her counterparts from Japan, Singapore, New Zealand, Australia and Malaysia -- was meant to lay the groundworks. "We are here in the region listening to our partners about what is most important to them, hearing from them and together figuring out what elements might be in a potential partnership that we will work on together next year."
Earlier in the day, Raimondo discussed cooperation in trade as well as semiconductor supply chain "transparency, security and resilience" with Malaysia's International Trade and Industry Minister Azmin Ali, according to a joint statement. Malaysia is one of Asia's key semiconductor production hubs and an increasingly important link in the U.S. supply chain.
"I had the chance to learn more about the country's semiconductor industry and how we can better integrate with their supply chain," Raimondo said about her meetings in Malaysia.
In Tokyo, Raimondo and her Japanese counterpart Koichi Hagiuda agreed to cooperate on strengthening industrial competitiveness and enhancing supply chain resiliency, according to the Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry.
During Raimondo's time in Singapore, the U.S. and the city-state reaffirmed plans to deepen cooperation on the digital economy and environmental technology. "We can help our small businesses access new markets and digital solutions by collaborating on common technical standards and interoperable systems," Raimondo and Singaporean Trade and Industry Minister Gan Kim Yong said in a joint statement.
While in Singapore, Raimondo also had separate meetings with the trade ministers from New Zealand and Australia, Damien O'Connor and Dan Tehan.
"We are very serious in re-engaging economically with the Indo-Pacific," Raimondo stressed on Wednesday during the Bloomberg New Economy Forum in Singapore.
Japan, Singapore, Malaysia, Australia and New Zealand are all members of the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, an 11-member trade bloc. The U.S. withdrew from the original version of the agreement in 2017, at the behest of then-President Donald Trump.
During Thursday's press briefing, she said the U.S. does not envision its new economic framework to be a traditional free trade agreement like CPTPP. "You will be able to do certain things in the context of this framework that are impossible in a traditional trade agreement. For example, we can allow for more flexibility for public-private partnerships and investment in infrastructure."
The U.S. has strengthened its security presence in Asia, but it has been seen as trailing China in terms of regional economic cooperation. China, already the biggest trade partner for many Asian economies, asked to join the CPTPP in September. It also applied for the Digital Economy Partnership Agreement, a digital trade pact launched by Singapore, New Zealand and Chile.
And China is part of the 15-member Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership -- the world's largest free trade pact, due to take effect in January. The U.S. is not in this deal, either.
Raimondo's trip came the same week Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping held an online summit, exchanging views on critical issues and seeking areas of cooperation.
For other Asian countries, Washington's renewed commitment arguably offers a chance to balance relations with Beijing. It could also help them rebuild after COVID-19.
"As we gradually reopen borders and resume people-to-people connectivity, I look forward to working with the U.S. to strengthen economic recovery from the pandemic," Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said in a Facebook post after he met Raimondo.
Similarly, Malaysian Prime Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob tweeted about the visit, "Malaysia celebrates good bilateral relations with the U.S. and we are optimistic that both countries will benefit from it."
US Won’t Join Pacific Trade Partnership but Will Pursue New ‘More Robust’ Framework: Commerce Secretary
TheEpochTimes: Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo told TV Tokyo in an interview on Nov. 15 that the United States will not join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) but will instead seek to form a separate, potentially “even more robust” economic framework.
Raimondo told the outlet that while the CPTPP pact “is not something that America would be part of at this time,” she said the United States is looking to form a framework with Japan and other nations that “could be even more robust in some ways than the traditional free trade agreement,” as per Nikkei Asia.
The Commerce Secretary made the remarks while on a trip to Japan, where she met with Japanese government and business leaders in Tokyo, with discussions focused on bilateral engagements, fostering ties between U.S. and Japanese private sectors, and increasing supply chain resiliency.
“During the meetings, the Secretary underscored the importance of expanding economic cooperation among like-minded partners in the Indo-Pacific region, including through the development of an Indo-Pacific economic framework to advance resilience, inclusion, sustainability, and the interests of our respective middle classes,” according to a readout of Raimondo’s visit, issued by the Commerce Department.
Raimondo and Japan’s Minister of Economy, Trade, and Industry, Hagiuda Koichi, jointly announced the launch of the Japan-U.S. Commercial and Industrial Partnership, which the Commerce Department described as “a collaborative mechanism that will strengthen the competitiveness, resiliency, and security of the economies of the United States and Japan.”
“We look forward to signing an agreement with the economies in the region which is a robust economic framework,” Raimondo told TV Tokyo.
The United States withdrew from a prior iteration of the CPTPP, called the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), under then-President Donald Trump, who denounced the deal as a giveaway of U.S. power that, if ratified, would fuel an exodus of jobs overseas.
“We’re going to stop the ridiculous trade deals that have taken everybody out of our country and taken companies out of our country, and it’s going to be reversed,” Trump said during a meeting with union leaders at the White House in January 2017. “I think you’re going to have a lot of companies come back to our country.”
President Joe Biden has been opposed to joining the CPTPP, which currently includes 11 countries—Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, and Vietnam—with China and Taiwan applying in September to join the pact.
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