On May 23, the Joe Biden administration took a significant step to turn the clock back to the Obama Presidency by launching its own version of a “pivot to Asia” through the establishment of the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity (IPEF) with other partner countries — Australia, Brunei, India, Indonesia, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Malaysia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam and the United States. Within days of its launch, IPEF expanded its membership to the Pacific Island states, with Fiji joining the initiative. An American initiative to bring together its allies in the Indo-Pacific region to enhance economic cooperation is bound to lead to comparisons with one of former U.S. President Barack Obama’s pet projects, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), which was spiked by Donald Trump immediately after he took over the reins in Washington. The IPEF reignites the twin ambitions of the U.S. to provide economic leadership and to challenge China’s hegemony in the region.
A tag that fits
The U.S. Trade Administration had touted the TPP as “Made in America”, a tag that seems equally appropriate for the IPEF. At its launch, the IPEF was proposed as an elaborate framework of rules covering four pillars, namely, fair and resilient trade, supply chain resiliency, clean energy decarbonisation, and tax and anti-corruption. It is not clear whether the original signatories to the IPEF were fully in the know of the details that were unveiled at the launch of the initiative, for there is no record of any prior discussion. However, evidence is available that suggests that Washington has been carefully constructing the framework ever since President Biden had first spoken about it in October 2021 during the East Asia Summit, in the presence of all IPEF signatories except Fiji.
