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WASHINGTON: East Asia's moves to forge a giant free trade area is a wake-up call for the United States after being fixated on the Middle East, a US-Japan forum was told Wednesday.
Studies are underway to consider the possibility of establishing free trade areas – one between 10 Southeast Asian nations and China, Japan and South Korea, and the other between the 13 economies and India, Australia and New Zealand.
The moves have caused some concerns in the United States, whose proposal for a mega free trade area covering 21 Pacific Rim economies has in effect been rebuffed by China, Japan as well as several other East Asian economies.
Such a growing East Asian partnership underscores the lack of US attention in the region, Republican US Senator Lisa Murkowski said at a Washington forum on East Asian economic integration and US-Japan relations.
"Over the past several years, much of Washington’s focus and attention has been on the Middle East – on Iraq, Iran, and the Israeli-Palestinian peace process," she said, agreeing that the focus was warranted.
"We have done so, however, to the detriment of our relations in Asia, and particularly Southeast Asia," said the ranking member of the Senate panel on East Asian and Pacific Affairs.
"We need to reengage – and that starts with our friends," said Murkowski, who represents Alaska, a state whose three largest trading partners are Japan, South Korea and China.
Murkowski said that while it would be easy for US policy makers to view greater economic integration within East Asia as a threat to US trade influence in the region, it provided Washington with an opportunity "to give our own trade agenda a much needed jump-start".
She lamented that talks in Congress about trade in Asia reflected a negative tone rather than an acknowledgment of what the benefits could be.
"And with the politics of next year’s presidential election already at hand, that tone is not likely to change," she said.
Even without economic integration in East Asia, Murkowski said, the United States should ramp up its engagement to maintain its relevance as economies in the region developed and expanded.
"Are we going to provide our friends and allies in Asia with a reason to continue their engagement with us, or do they need to look elsewhere for their economic growth?" she asked.
The United States has so far forged free trade pacts with Australia and Singapore and it is awaiting Congressional approval for an agreement with South Korea. Bid to forge similar partnerships in the region has met with limited success.
Yasuo Hayashi, chairman of the Japan External Trade Organization (Jetro), speaking at the forum, underlined the importance of the United States and Japan forging what Tokyo calls an economic partnership agreement or EPA.
Such a pact focuses not only on the liberalization of trade in goods as required by a free trade agreement but also covers the opening up of the services and investment sectors, officials said.
The EPA could also be seen as a joint collaboration between the world's two richest economies to help in East Asian progress, Hayashi said.
"For a pair of close allies that share common values, this is an issue to work on," he said.
In Asia, Japan already has EPAs with Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand and is negotiating one with India. It concluded talks last month for such an agreement with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) as a whole.
- AFP/so
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