Pompeo announces $113 mln initiatives in Asia
US eases control of high-technology product sales to India
WASHINGTON, July 30, (RTRS): US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Monday announced $113 million in new technology, energy and infrastructure initiatives in emerging Asia at a time when China is pouring billions of dollars in investments into the region.
Amid increased US trade frictions with China, Pompeo’s announcement sought to build on President Donald Trump’s “Indo Pacific” strategy that aims to cast the United States as a trustworthy partner in the region.
Pompeo said the United States was seeking a “free and open” Asia without domination by any one country, in what appeared to be a reference to China’s growing economic clout and heightened tensions in the disputed South China Sea.
“Like so many of our Asian allies and friends, our country fought for its own independence from an empire that expected deference,” Pompeo told the US Chamber of Commerce business group. “We thus have never and will never seek domination in the Indo-Pacific, and we will oppose any country that does.”
“These funds represent just a down payment on a new era in US economic commitment to peace and prosperity in the Indo-Pacific region,” Pompeo said.
Pompeo said he would visit Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia this week, where he planned to announce new security assistance.
A senior US official said the American investments were not aimed at countering China’s Belt and Road Initiative, which involves dozens of countries in an estimated $1 trillion of mostly state-led infrastructure projects linking Asia, parts of Africa and Europe.
Eswar Prasad, a Cornell University trade professor and former head of the IMF’s China division, said the US initiatives were small in comparison to Chinese investments.
“In both scale and scope, these initiatives pale in ambition relative to comparable initiatives by China,” Prasad said. “It also highlights the distinction between China’s approach of bold and grand government-led initiatives and the much more modest role of the US government.
Countries in the region have been worried by Trump’s “America first” policy, withdrawal from the Trans Pacific Partnership trade deal and pursuit of a trade conflict with China that threatens to disrupt regional supply chains.
The United States first outlined its strategy to develop the Indo-Pacific economy at an Asia-Pacific summit last year.
“Indo-Pacific,” defined by Pompeo as a region stretching from the US West Coast to India’s west coast, has become known in diplomatic circles as shorthand for a broader and democratic-led region in place of “Asia-Pacific,” which from some perspectives had authoritarian China too firmly at its center.