As the US tries to shape a new order to rally the Asia-Pacific to its side, it has to sort out a few big questions about the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, Stephen Olson writes. While the convergence of manufacturing standards over two centuries spurred global trade, the digitization of trade documentation has remained a stubborn outlier, with a sprawl of different jurisdictional digital standards limiting the replacement of paper, Kati Suominen says. Trade turned the US into a dumping ground for China, Jeff Ferry argues in the latest episode of our Current Account podcast series. And we look at a ADB annual report on the pressures facing Asia-Pacific trade.
NEW ARTICLE
Three things you need to know as IPEF takes shape
Stephen Olson 28 March 2023
The more optimistic proponents of IPEF paint it as an inventive new template for trade agreements suitable for an age when the classic trade deal is no longer going to win general electorates over. But skeptics question what value can be achieved under a loose framework that lacks leverage and falls short on corporate buy-in – and all this as the US prepares to host the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in November, our Senior Research Fellow Stephen Olson writes.
Imagine if every train trip in Europe required a transfer at national borders because of the different widths of national railway gauges. Or if every nation had its own standard size for laptop ports for USB drives. These types of challenges are getting rarer today because of global standards convergence over the past two centuries. But standardization has been slow in one key domain: digital documentation, our Research Fellow Kati Suominen writes.
In key parts of the world, and not least in the US, trade has become something of a dirty word. The belief is that trade and globalization benefited select elites, but left many industrial belts jobless and stagnating. In the view of Jeff Ferry, chief economist for the Coalition for a Prosperous America in an interview with our Research Fellow Stewart Paterson, China and other Asian economies grew persistent current account surpluses against the US that have aggravated social inequalities and now pose national security threats.
2022 marked an eventful year in global trade and investment. As pandemic pressures eased the world over, new inflation-related constraints were introduced, and climate goals took centerstage in shaping trade flows. The Asian Development Bank’s annual Asian Economic Integration Report provides a summary of how these various pressures and crises are impacting economies of the Asia-Pacific. Here's what we learnt.
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