Self-benefit at heart of 'Indo-Pacific' framework: China Daily editorial

The serious divergences in key fields exposed by the first in-person ministerial meeting under the "Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity" that the Joe Biden administration hosted in Los Angeles last week indicates the mechanism aimed at containing China will continue to be a work in progress.

US President Joe Biden proposed the IPEF during his trip to Japan in May to exclude China from the Asia-Pacific in terms of trade, labor and digital standards, clean energy, supply chains, tax and anti-graft. It is the love-child of the America-first strategy of the former Donald Trump administration and the US-should-dominate-global-business strategy proposed by Biden when he served as vice-president more than five years ago.

Putting old, adulterated wines in a new bottle apparently cannot attract new customers. Although representatives from 13 countries attended the two-day meeting, their presence, instead of showing the multilateral support to the IPEF, only served to demonstrate how impossible it is for the initiative to become the catch-all it is claimed to be.

The reason is self-evident, as what these countries are looking for is a high-level multilateral trade framework that can lower trade barriers and facilitate investment and exchanges. But what the US offers them is just a one-way channel tilted toward the US. Joining the framework will only make the participants appendants to the US economy and politics.

Those attending the meeting will have returned home with the unmistakable message that the US is only looking out for No 1. The Biden administration intends to take advantage of the framework to arrange with the participants bilateral and multilateral policies that are in favor of the US, at the lowest possible cost.

It seeks to promote clean energy and decarbonization ideas and practices that primarily work for the US economy, reform supply chain systems in a direction that benefits the US economy, and force other countries to accept US standards on taxes and anti-corruption.

That's why India has expressed worries about the enforcement of the US' digital standards; the Republic of Korea has aired the need for vigilance toward the IPEF's exclusiveness to other multilateral trade frameworks the country participates in with China and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, such as the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership; and Japan and Australia have complained that the US is asking for much yet it won't even lower its tariffs.

Biden also has his own selfish motives for the framework, to bypass Congress and add fuel to the Democrats' cause in the next presidential election, as the deadline for the inking of the final IPEF pact is set before the election. So no matter how much the Biden administration tried to assure those attending the meeting of the benefits of the initiative, its guests will be wary now as they know they will have nothing to gain from it and the US has nothing to lose.