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**MAY 23, 2022**

Kuttner on TAP

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**** Biden's New Trade Deal: Less Than Meets
the Eye

All the details of the new Indo-Pacific Economic Framework remain to be
filled in.

Meeting in Tokyo with leaders of Japan, India, and ten other countries
at a high-profile launch event, President Biden announced

the new Indo-Pacific Economic Framework. IPEF is billed both as a
regional economic alliance with friendly Asian nations to counter the
influence of China, and as a more planning-friendly alternative to
Obama's proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).

TPP was a corporate-driven, sweetheart trade deal masquerading as China
containment. Trump pulled the U.S. out of that deal in 2017. But as a
counter to TPP, the devil is in IPEF's details. And despite the
fanfare, most details have yet to be negotiated.

A core problem is how the U.S. and its trading partners reconcile the
mantra of more trade with Biden's commitment to dealing with the
supply chain crisis via industrial policies and reshoring. The partner
nations would like the U.S. to lower tariffs, but that is a nonstarter.
Industrial policy is not free trade.

IPEF, according to the administration, is built on four "pillars":
cooperation on digital trade; more resilient supply chains; increasing
sources of clean energy; and having common tax, anti-money laundering,
and anti-bribery measures. But unlike TPP, which was a regional deal
with common provisions, IPEF takes an à la carte approach. Countries
can decide which areas they want to join; and not all deals with all
participating countries will be the same. This is the opposite of a
multilateral agreement, the traditional grail of free-traders.

The devil is especially in the details when it comes to "cooperation on
digital trade." Big Tech sees this as a chance to use trade to undermine
domestic regulation of privacy and anti-monopoly regulation.

And 5 of the 12 countries that have been enlisted as partners in IPEF
have dismal records on labor and human rights-the Philippines,
Malaysia, Vietnam, Brunei, and Indonesia. Allowing supply chain exports
of these countries expedited entry into the U.S. because they sign on to
other parts of the deal but don't change their labor practices would
make a travesty of Biden's commitment to establishing a new model of
worker-centered trade.

All of these issues and more will be the subject of intensive
bargaining-not just among the U.S. and its trading partners but among
different agencies of the Biden administration that are less, or more,
captive to corporate interests. For instance, the lead negotiator from
the Commerce Department is Sharon Yuan, a big TPP enthusiast, an
advocate of permanent normal trade relations with China back in the
Clinton era, and former CEO of the Asia Group.

In today's

**New York Times**, David Leonhardt writes an effusive piece

that begins: "Biden's new trade deal is based on two big ideas: moving
away from neoliberalism and containing China." The deal does attempt to
contain China. It remains to be seen just how far away from
neoliberalism the deal moves.

~ ROBERT KUTTNER

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