Biden's Asian economic talks include 13 countries, and no China

TOKYO (May 23): US President Joe Biden launched his plan for US economic engagement in Asia on Monday (May 23), leaving it to the 13 founding countries to work out how to enforce their agreements and if China could ever join.

Biden is unveiling the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity (IPEF) in Tokyo on his first trip in office to Asia.

The White House says the deal offers no tariff relief to the countries that join, including India, Malaysia and the Philippines, but provides a way to sort through key issues from climate change to supply chain resilience and digital trade.

Washington has lacked an economic pillar to its Indo-Pacific engagement since former president Donald Trump quit a multinational trans-Pacific trade agreement, leaving the field open to its key competitor China to expand its influence.

“The future of the 21st century economy is going to largely be written in the Indo-Pacific — in our region,” Biden said at a launch event in Tokyo. “We’re writing the new rules.”

Biden wants the deal to raise environmental, labour and other standards across Asia. The other initial founders are Australia, Brunei, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, New Zealand, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam and the US.

But those founding countries will need to negotiate what standards they wish to abide by, how they will be enforced, whether their domestic legislatures will need to ratify them and how to consider potential future members, including China, officials told reporters.