Biden pursues restoring ties in Asia
President to unveil framework for US, regional economies
PYEONGTAEK, South Korea — When President Joe Biden arrived on his inaugural mission to Asia on Friday, the first place he headed from the airplane was not a government hall or embassy or even a military base, but a sprawling superconductor factory that represented the real battleground of a 21st-century struggle for influence in the region.
The choice of destination to begin a five-day trip to South Korea and Japan underscored the challenges of Biden’s effort to rebuild U.S. ties to a region where longtime allies have grown uncertain about Washington’s commitments amid anti-trade sentiment at home, while China has expanded its dominance in the economic arena.
The Democrat’s visit to Asia came as polling released Friday by The Associated PRESS-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found Biden’s U.S. approval rating at 39%, the lowest of his presidency. The survey also found deepening pessimism about the economy and the state of the United States especially among Democrats.
About 2 in 10 U.S. adults said the country is headed in the right direction or described the economy as good, down from about 3 in 10 in April. Among Democrats, just 33% said the country is on the right track, down from 49% last month.
Biden’s message was pitched toward the promise of a better global tomorrow, yet also aimed at U.S. voters amid political challenges at home such as inflation driven higher by the chip shortage as he tries to show his administration is delivering on the economy.
“So much of the future of the world is going to be written here, in the Indo Pacific, over the next several decades,” Biden said at the factory where he was joined by new President Yoon Suk Yeol. “This is the moment, in my view, to invest in one another to deepen our business ties, to bring our people even closer together.”
The president hopes to lure countries back into the U.S. orbit despite the decision by his predecessor, President Donald Trump, five years ago to abandon a far-reaching trade pact known as the Trans-pacific Partnership — but not by rejoining the economic bloc, even though it was negotiated by the Obama administration that he served as vice president. Instead, Biden plans to offer a far less sweeping multinational economic structure that has some in the region skeptical about what it will add up to.
Biden will formally unveil the Indo-pacific Economic Framework on Monday in
Tokyo, bringing together many of the same countries from the trade partnership to coordinate policies on energy, supply chains and other issues, but without the market access or tariff reductions that powered the original partnership. Eager for U.S. leadership to counter China, a number of countries in the region plan to sign up and hail the new alignment but privately have expressed concern that it may be an empty exercise.
The framework is essentially “a new packaging of existing Biden administration priorities in this economic policy area,” said Scott Snyder, director
of U.s.-korea policy at the Council on Foreign Relations. “And whether or not it really takes off depends on whether partners believe that there’s enough there there to justify being engaged.”
But even Biden’s own ambassador to Japan, Rahm Emanuel, acknowledged the uncertainty in the region. Countries want to know, “What is it we are signing up for?” he told reporters in Tokyo on Friday. Is this an alternative to the Transpacific Partnership? “Yes and no,” he said.
The framework is not a traditional free trade agreement but instead an architecture for negotiation to address four major areas: supply chains, the digital economy, clean energy transformation and investments in infrastructure.
“When you hear some of the, ‘Well, we don’t quite know. We’re not sure because it doesn’t look like things have looked before,’ I say, ‘Just you wait,’ ” Jake Sullivan, the president’s national security adviser, told reporters on Air Force One as it made its way across the Pacific. “Because I think this is going to be the new model of economic arrangement that will set the terms and rules of the road for trade and technology and supply chains for the 21st century.”
Sullivan said there will be “a significant roster of countries” joining the framework when Biden kicks it off Monday, but administration officials have not identified them.
Japan, which has signaled it would rather the U.S. rejoin the Trans-pacific Partnership, will nonetheless embrace the new framework, as will South Korea. Singapore, Thailand and the Philippines have indicated interest, while India and Indonesia have expressed reservations.
Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh of Vietnam said this month that it was still not clear what the new framework would mean in concrete terms. “We are ready to work alongside the U.S. to discuss, to further clarify what these pillars entail,” he said at a forum held by the Center for Strategic and International Studies.