Review: US Asia Trade Policy Futures Amid Trump-Harris Contest
New book by ex-senior trade official argues new-look U.S. trade policy is likely to be a new normal in the Indo-Pacific amid China competition and domestic polarization.
A new book by an ex-senior trade official suggests that a “new-look U.S. trade policy” is likely to endure as a new normal in U.S. policy in the Indo-Pacific as well as globally even as it complicates U.S. competition against China.
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Review: US Asia Trade Policy Futures Amid Trump-Harris Contest
Context
“The United States is not prepared to do an individual free trade agreement,” Philippine Ambassador to the United States Jose Manuel Romualdez plainly noted earlier this year as Manila seeks more economic engagement with its ally1. As we discussed in a recent ASEAN Wonk podcast episode, the Philippines is one of several U.S. Indo-Pacific partners trying to reach the very economic deals with Washington that could be central to boosting America’s strategic position in its declared competition with China. Amid the U.S. turn away from trade, the list of unrealized U.S. economic opportunities has been piling up in key regions like Southeast Asia, even amid wider strategic inroads. Washington is out of the sectoral agreement game in crucial industries like the digital economy and has not forged (admittedly challenging) proposed mineral pacts with Indonesia and the Philippines2. Meanwhile, as anxieties grow about widening U.S. “small yard, high fence”restrictions reaching third countries like Malaysia or Vietnam, China — despite a trust deficit and its own economic limits — is expanding a nearly 2-to-1 volume advantage on trade and recording quick wins in consequential areas like high-speed rail, digital payments and electric vehicles3.
Select 2024 Publicized US-Southeast Asia Policy Economic-Related Developments
A new book “Walking Out” by ex-senior U.S. trade official Michael Beeman provides a first-of-its-kind book length assessment of one of the most consequential ongoing geoeconomic shifts in U.S. policy4. Beeman’s account explores Washington’s walkout since 2017 from the freer, rules-based trade that it advanced for decades and the implications for the Indo-Pacific and global economy. The book does so through vivid anecdotes familiar to close watchers of U.S. policy and regional affairs — from disruptions in the APEC trade statement process during Vietnam’s host year to TPP negotiations with Japan covering tough areas like auto content rules5. In doing so, it adds to recent books and commentaries by former practitioners about lost opportunities in current U.S. economic policy as Washington seeks to compete with China, some of which were reviewed here at ASEAN Wonk. This perspective has also come from U.S. trade officials, including Wendy Cutler and Barbara Weisel who previously worked on Asia trade negotiations in the Barack Obama and George W. Bush administrations6. Walking Out runs 310 pages.
Analysis
Walking Out provides a practitioner’s view of what it terms the biggest transformation of U.S. trade policy in nearly a century that looks here to stay7. Contrary to accounts that focus on single decisions like TPP withdrawal or make hopeful calls for a return back to the status quo, Beeman argues that the record of the Trump and Biden administrations point to greater convergence between the New Right and Progressive Left in forcing a reset of past trade priorities, practices and norms America itself shaped for 75 years8. These include core principles such as open trade; most-favored-nation treatment; national treatment and dispute resolution. This is a marked contrast from Washington’s decades-old approach of addressing challenges by layering on rules and aid mechanisms targeting specific constituencies while maintaining an overall commitment to freer, more open trade. For Beeman, Washington’s current approach for now still amounts to a “walkout” — equivalent to a calculated move in negotiations to either protest actions or reset discussions — rather than a “walk away” for good9. But he argues that this trend looks here to stay. “America’s new trade policy now appears sufficiently entrenched, and, for the foreseeable future, appears likely to remain America’s new normal,” Beeman writes10.
Walking Out also forecasts the outlook for this new-look U.S. trade policy in key policy areas that are important to watch and will be of interest to scholars, policymakers and businesses alike (see table below for a summary of these priority areas, along with major issues to watch and notable details. Paying subscribers can also read the rest of the “Analysis” section and “Implications” section looking at how these dynamics play out in the future)11.