Biden Administration Announces Indo-Pacific Deal, Clashing With Industry Groups
Source: New York Times
The Biden administration announced Saturday that it had reached an agreement with 13 other countries in the Indo-Pacific region to coordinate supply chains, in an effort to lessen the countries’ dependence on China for critical products and allow them to better weather crises like wars, pandemics and climate change.
The supply chain agreement is the first result of the administration’s trade initiative in the region, called the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework. Negotiations are continuing for the other three pillars of the agreement, which focus on facilitating trade and improving conditions for workers, expanding the use of clean energy, and reforming tax structures and fighting corruption.
Gina Raimondo, the secretary of commerce, said the supply chain agreement would deepen America’s economic cooperation with partners in the Indo-Pacific region, helping American companies do business there and making the United States more competitive globally. “Bottom line is, this is about increasing the U.S. economic presence in the region,” she said in a call with reporters Thursday.
But prominent business groups expressed reservations about the Indo-Pacific deal, and on Friday, more than 30 of them sent a public letter to the administration saying the negotiations were leaving out traditional U.S. trade priorities that could help American exporters. That included lowering tariffs charged on their goods but also limiting other regulatory barriers to trade and establishing stronger intellectual property protections.
Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/27/business/economy/biden-indo-pacific-trade-deal.html
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Press release - https://www.commerce.gov/news/press-releases/2023/05/substantial-conclusion-negotiations-landmark-ipef-supply-chain
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Complete deregulation and the concept of "outsourcing" overseas for the "cheap" labor cost. Never mind that there would be shipping costs to bring those items back to the U.S. for further assembly and/or distribution. And with that mindset, more and more companies adopted the "just in time" mode of operation, something that got completely upended with the pandemic. 
