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Jude Althagafi — Mon, 20 Sep 2021 14:25:20 +0000

Even though the Biden administration’s China policy appears to be under perpetual review, there have been some developments worth mentioning in the past two weeks that pose new challenges and provide some insight on where the review might be heading.

The first is an external development: China’s application to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP). This is the latest step in what has been a significant evolution in Chinese thinking. They began by regarding the original Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) as an American plot aimed at them. Their attitude began to change as the likelihood of an agreement being reached increased and they realized how it would affect them. In short, China figured out that when it came to tariff-free zones, it was better to be inside the tent than outside if it wanted to sell to the other countries inside. Otherwise, its companies would vote with their feet and move inside the tent on their own.

While that may be the economic rationale for joining, politics may be more important. From that perspective it was a brilliant move, at least for the short term, because it allows China to portray itself as pro-trade, pro-multilateral agreement, and pro-trade law while at the same time reminding everybody that the United States has no Asian economic policy. In short, China is demonstrating leadership, and we are . . . just watching.

In the long run, however, this could play out differently. Nobody who has followed CPTPP thinks China would qualify to join without major changes in its economic system that it has long refused to make. So, the negotiations will go on—and they will take a long time. China has three choices: make the changes it will be asked to make, promise to make them and then ignore its promises, or pressure the other CPTPP members into lowering their standards. Right now, I’m betting on door number three, but the outcome could be more complicated than people think. By applying to join, China is handing leverage to the other members, some of whom are already victims of Chinese bullying. So, for example, will Canada veto Chinese membership because two of its citizens remain in Chinese prisons without justification, or will it make a deal to support membership in return for their release? You can ask the same question about Australia.

That means if the United States thinks China’s application is dead on arrival, it could be in for a rude surprise. Unfortunately, the one thing that is clear is that the United States is once again reacting rather than leading and therefore letting China determine the course of events in Asia.

In contrast, there is some thought that rumors the administration may start a new Section 301 investigation of Chinese subsidies indicate a policy is beginning to appear, but I am not persuaded. It is more likely that this is simply a clever way of kicking the can and postponing any action. Section 301 investigations can take up to a year, which means the administration is just buying time. By holding out hope that the investigation could lead to either more tariffs or fewer tariffs, the administration manages to keep both sides quiet without actually doing anything. And, since anything the president does will inevitably be criticized by Republican China hawks as dangerous and inadequate, this gives administration officials another year to dodge that bullet. Of course, they may not get away with it, since the expiration of Trump’s phase one agreement next February will likely force them to come up with something before then, but it still buys them several more months.

More indicative of the trend of the relationship was the call between the two presidents that the United States initiated. One report indicated that Biden proposed a summit between the two leaders, and Xi did not respond. Other reports denied that, but no agreement on a summit was announced. There are multiple explanations for that, the simplest one being Covid-related. Xi has not left China since the pandemic began, and it is rumored that he will join the G20 meeting next month remotely. However, it should also be viewed in the context of recent Chinese statements objecting strenuously to U.S. actions related to China’s human rights violations and the message conveyed to former secretary of state Kerry when he visited China to discuss climate that all these issues were linked, and he should not expect China to cooperate on one while the United States was not cooperating on the others.

This is a typical Chinese approach when the United States talks about human rights. For us it is a moral principle; for them it is an attack on the Communist Party’s control of the country. Past U.S. presidents have learned that if they persist, they will accomplish nothing with China, and they usually stop talking about it. It remains to be seen whether Biden will follow the same path, which is not noble but pragmatic.

Either way, the call is a reminder that the U.S.-China relationship is not in good shape and is getting worse. The other two events are reminders that the United States still does not have a China policy and does not seem in a hurry to develop one.

William Reinsch holds the Scholl Chair in International Business at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C.

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Jude Althagafi — Fri, 03 Sep 2021 12:56:53 +0000

China holds a paradox: Western policy-makers and many firms decry discriminatory business practices — concerns that have culminated in a trade war between the US and China — yet foreign direct investment (FDI) in China continues to thrive. In the first quarter of this year, FDI into China soared by 40% compared to the same period a year prior and, as reported by Unctad, the country overtook the US as the top destination for overall foreign investment in 2020. China’s trade in goods and services, in which value chains animated by foreign investors play a crucial role, is also as buoyant as ever.

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In a recent paper, we tried to reconcile these contrasting realities. Although tensions over human rights, security and geopolitics clearly play a big role in relations with China, we focused solely on the economic and business aspects of the situation.

To do so, we first examined surveys of EU, US and Japanese businesses operating in China to understand why they continue to operate there, despite the trade war. Unsurprisingly, businesses point to the size and dynamism of China’s market as key to their presence. However, they also mention several threats and concerns that give them pause. We focus specifically on those concerns to compare China with other countries that attract large amounts of FDI. We only used trusted sources, such as the OECD, the World Bank, the World Economic Forum and the World Trade Organization. In a highly politicised debate, our aim was to arrive at an appraisal of business conditions in China that is as fact-based and objective as possible.

Drawing on company surveys and international comparisons, we show that some of the concerns expressed by Western policy-makers about operating in China are real, and that a particular weakness is the uneven and difficult-to-predict application of laws and regulations, as distinct from the laws themselves.

However, we also show that, along many important dimensions (such as protection of intellectual property [IP] rights, for example), China compares well with other countries at similar levels of development, while in others (such as overall ease of doing business), China outranks nearly all developing countries and even some advanced countries. The implication is that, while China’s size and dynamism are clearly very important for foreign investors, they provide only one part of the explanation of the country’s attractiveness. Moreover, contrary to the prevailing narrative, conditions for doing business in China have improved considerably over the past few years.

Macro fundamentals help explain the attractiveness of China. The country is now the world’s largest market for many products, from automobiles to some luxury products. According to a McKinsey study, top global brands now have a higher penetration in China than in the US. Chinese consumer goods markets — and those for machinery, parts and equipment — are growing three times as fast as their Western counterparts.

Meanwhile, per capita incomes in China (a good proxy for labour cost), are about one-fifth of those in the West. Accounting for productivity, the cost of labour in China in many sectors, though rising rapidly, remains internationally competitive. It is not surprising, therefore, that many international companies place China among their three top strategic priorities as a market and production base and, despite political pressures of various kinds, very few firms say they plan to leave the country.

However, China’s market size and growth trends are not the whole story.

Doing business in China

The World Bank’s ‘Doing Business’ report, which is based only on measures of regulations and time required to conduct ordinary business transactions (such as clearing goods through customs) now ranks China 31st out of 190 countries. The World Economic Forum’s competitiveness report, which is based on a far wider set of indicators and includes a comprehensive survey of executives, ranks China similarly. This means that China is ranked in line with the average advanced country and ahead of some of them — and ahead of nearly all other developing countries. The Doing Business ranking only places Thailand ahead of China in this group.

The trade and investment regime in China is not as open as in advanced countries, although it is improving and compares well with other developing countries. China’s average applied tariffs in the WTO are now around 7%, around 4% higher than the advanced countries and a bit lower than a sample of large upper-middle-income countries, such as Brazil and Turkey.

China also displays very good trade logistics according to the World Bank, although non-tariff barriers impede trade about as pervasively as in other upper-middle-income developing countries that attract FDI. According to the OECD, in the manufacturing sector, China’s FDI regime displays few restrictions and is more open than some advanced countries, such as Australia and Canada. However, while China’s service sector is far less open than is the case in advanced countries, it is in line with other upper-middle-income developing countries.

The country is clearly becoming a more open economy, as shown by China’s score on the OECD’s Foreign Investment Restrictiveness Index. China’s rank in the World Bank’s Doing Business report has improved by a remarkable 60 places over the past five years. China’s new foreign investment law eliminates joint ventures requirements in many sectors and establishes equal treatment of foreign companies in commercial law and even in public procurement. The new law also explicitly forbids forced technology transfers. The country has recently concluded major agreements with its main trading partners, namely the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership with Asian countries and the Comprehensive Investment Agreement with the EU. Both of these agreements face a difficult ratification process.

China Inc

The image of a “China Inc” systematically seeking advantage for its firms against foreign competitors, as often depicted in Western political discourse, is not consistent with the available data — most foreign firms do not feel discriminated against. Half of European firms report to their chamber that they are treated equally and 10% are treated better than Chinese firms — and their combined share has increased in recent years. Similar results are found among American firms. Of course, 40% of European firms complaining of discrimination is far too large a number, but the discrimination that occurs appears to be contextual — dependent on sector, geographic location and individuals — and not systemic. The IT sector is one where discrimination against foreign firms appears to be especially pronounced, however.

China’s market institutions are ranked broadly ahead of other upper-middle-income developing countries and improving, but they still fall behind Western standards. Despite its many achievements, from taking a lead in 5G networks to space exploration, China’s vital statistics remain those of a developing country. Based on per capita income, China is classified as an upper-middle-income developing country by the World Bank, like Brazil and Thailand. For example, 25% of China’s labour force is in agriculture, around five times the share in OECD members, and 24% of people live under the World Bank’s middle-income poverty line of $5.50 PPP a day.

International surveys find corruption to be rife in China, although it is not as bad as in most developing countries at similar levels of development. Measures of judicial independence also place China ahead of other upper-middle-income countries, but some way behind the OECD average. On the thorny issue of IP protection, China ranks 53rd out of 141 countries in the World Economic Forum survey, well behind the average rank of OECD countries, but ahead of nearly all other large upper-middle-income countries.

Improving the situation

China’s biggest challenge is consistency in the application of laws and regulations, and frequently not the laws themselves. American firms have placed this concern at the very top of their list for many years. European and Japanese firms also mention it as a major concern. This is ironic as the perception in Western policy circles is of an all-powerful, all-controlling state apparatus, reinforced by the country’s success in early control of the pandemic. In fact, China’s spatial and social inequalities — and its institutional underdevelopment — present enormous challenges of implementation of the law.

The picture that emerges from our extensive review of the relevant data is of a central government trying hard to improve China’s business climate and to address the many concerns of foreign investors, but making only slow progress. Nonetheless, in sectors such as some prioritised under China’s 2025 programme, the authorities’ desire to attract more FDI clashes with the objective of promoting China’s own capacity. And in media and education, critical to political control, FDI remains tightly restricted.

Most established foreign investors in China are familiar with the features we highlight here, which is why nearly all persist despite the complaints and political tensions. Our survey shows that despite all the regulatory bodog casino impediments and the trade war, foreign firms in China are concerned above all with the ordinary challenges of running a business: increasing competition, slowing growth, rising labour cost and so on.

China now plays a vital and growing role in world markets, and its leaders should recognise that they bear a special responsibility to move faster on market reforms and, above all, improve their implementation. At the same time, Western policymakers should recognise that China remains a developing country, and still in a transition that is likely to take decades to complete.

Uri Dadush is senior fellow of the Policy Center for the New South and non-resident scholar at Bruegel. Pauline Weil is a research assistant at Bruegel.

To read the full commentary from fDi Intelligence, please click here.

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Jude Althagafi — Fri, 06 Aug 2021 19:58:11 +0000

For over a decade, rare earths have emerged as a crucial commodity in the race for the geo-economic dominance of this century, and that is not by chance. As a matter of fact, rare earths are fundamental for the development of the new technologies that will enable the green revolution envisaged by the international community’s climate change efforts.

Rare earths are the key elements that make up those metals and alloys necessary for the decarbonisation process of developed economies. Once processed and refined, these 17 elements are indispensable not only for the production of industrial catalysts, but also for the permanent magnets used in the production of wind turbines and electric vehicles. Thus, rare earths play a strategic role in the development of those industrial sectors that will power the green transition of the next three or four decades.

Precisely for this reason, Chinese companies’ quasi-monopoly over the production and processing of rare earths is a fundamental, strategic dilemma for Western countries’ industrial policies. Before the Covid-19 pandemic, China accounted for no less than 62.8% of all rare earths mined globally. However, mining is only the first step of the elaborate value chain that cuts across the rare earth industry. In the downstream processing and related industrial production sectors (such as permanent magnets), Chinese companies’ shares increases up to 85-90%.

Whilst global concentration in Chinese hands has long been an accepted reality in the rare earths industry, Beijing’s inclination to weaponize this dependency has raised the alarm in all Western countries. In 2010, in the aftermath of an incident involving the Japanese coast guard and a Chinese fishing vessel in the contested waters of the Senkaku-Diaoyu islands, Beijing restricted the export of rare earths towards Japan for several months. Then, at the height of the US-China techno-commercial tensions when the Trump administration announced the Huawei ban in 2019, President Xi Jinping visited a rare earths processing plant alongside Liu He, the Chinese chief negotiator in the trade dispute with the US. In addition to the thinly veiled threat of retaliation, Xi also declared that China needed to embark on a new “Long March” in its economic confrontation against the US.

Facing the risk of overdependence on China, several Western countries have considered diversifying their supplies over the last decade, though most of them have only started making strides in the last few years. Japan was the first one in dealing with such a situation: in 2010, when Beijing partially blocked its exports, Tokyo relied on China for 90% of its imports. Also, the Chinese government’s drastic reduction of rare earths export quotas generated a strong pressure on Japanese processing and refining companies (which, at that time, dominated the sector) to relocate to China due to the induced gap between national and international commodity prices.

Over the years, Japan remained a key consumer of rare earths, yet it also managed to reduce its dependence on Chinese supplies. On the one hand, geological explorations led to the discovery of new, untapped reserves of rare earths, and the government is currently considering a reform allowing more financial support towards exploration activities. On the other hand, Japanese companies have also found alternative solutions: Honda, for instance, announced it had invented a motor that didn’t contain heavy rare earths a couple of years ago. The centrepiece in this quest, though, was the diversification of supplies. The leader in this process was JOGMEC (Japan Oil Gas and Metals National Corporation), a state-owned enterprise, which invested heavily in several resource-rich countries like Namibia and Australia in order to support an alternative network of rare earths suppliers. As of now, the share of Chinese imports has indeed declined to 58%, and Tokyo aims to push that figure below 50%.

One of the first companies JOGMEC decided to bet on was the Australian Lynas Corp. Thanks to an initial $250 mln investment carried out in partnership with Sojitz Corp in 2011 — and with further injections of capital in the following years — Lynas currently provides a third of Japanese demand for rare earths. It is also the only non-Chinese company with the expertise and the infrastructure necessary to operate in the downstream sector of rare earths processing. Over the last two years, Lynas has sought to expand its network of processing infrastructure: this effort has been supported by the US in its effort to build a new supply chain independent from Chinese companies. As such, the Department of Defence (DOD) allocated $30m for the construction of a processing plant in Texas last February.

This initiative underlines Washington’s growing attention towards this matter, which has become apparent in the last few years. The reopening of California’s Mountain Pass mine in 2018 – once the world’s biggest before its decline and closure in 2000 – marked the return of the US on the rare earths mining market, despite Beijing’s quasi-monopoly on processing. By the same token, the Trump administration declared rare earths as essential for national defence in 2019 and thus channelled DOD resources towards the reconstruction of a national rare earths processing capacity. From Colorado to California, new feasibility studies and pilot projects have been carried out to rebuild industrial infrastructure. Governmental support for this endeavour, albeit in new forms, has continued despite the transition: Joe Biden’s infrastructure plan envisions conspicuous funds for research and innovation as well as the development of a market for renewable energy and electric vehicles, two sectors wherein rare earths industrial processing capacity will be key.

The most evident gear-change operated by the Biden administration took place at the international level with the engagement of Indo-Pacific partners for the construction of a supply chain less reliant on China. The Quad, for instance, has provided a venue for its members – US, Japan, Australia, and India – to articulate their intention to develop a mining and refining capacity of their own. To that end, JOGMEC is considering the possibility of providing financial support to the early-stage projects currently underway in Texas and California.

Some obstacles are yet to be overcome, however. First, the rare earths industry requires specific technical knowledge and capacity to manage burdensome externalities: as a matter of fact, mining and processing entail serious risks for the local population both in terms of health and environmental degradation. Lynas’ processing plant in Malaysia, for instance, has been accused of failing to properly inform local authorities about the risks concerning the disposal of radioactive waste material derived from the production process.

Another factor is the fierce competition of big Chinese state-owned enterprises, whose production quotas were raised by almost 30% in the first semester of 2021, while Chinese exports of rare earths over the first six months of this year have surpassed pre-pandemic levels (16.5% above the first half of 2019). In addition, the issue of Chinese companies’ quasi-monopolistic market presence also applies to the integrity of Washington’s own alternative supply chain, since the international consortium that allowed the reopening of the Mountain Pass mine includes Shenghe Resources Holding, a big Chinese player in the sector.

However, the most important issue revolves around the financial sustainability of an alternative to the Chinese supply chain. Lynas, the most experienced rare earths company outside China, reported profits for only two years between 2014 and 2020, and had to be bailed out by JOGMEC in 2016. According to experts, finding a market-based solution for the creation of an alternative supply chain will prove difficult: a generous, consistent, and durable financial commitment by public authorities is indeed critical for the success of the initiative, as highlighted by the Japanese experience. However, US and Australian authorities are upgrading their commitment and have been issuing grants and funds to support the domestic development and commercialisation of processing plants, whose main beneficiary has been Lynas, with the aim of setting up complementary facilities in Kalgoorlie, Australia, and Texas.

There’s another, more important silver lining though. The green technologies market is expected to grow in parallel with the decarbonisation of the global economy: demand for rare earths should thus increase, not only in the West, but in China, too. Beijing — albeit dominant in the production market — has been the first rare earths importer since 2018, and some estimates suggest it may become a net importer at some point throughout this decade. Globally, demand is set to increase and drive up sales of existing rare earths companies. As a possible sign of this trend, Lynas reported its record quarterly revenue last month. Therefore, the global expansion in the demand for rare earths is an opportunity Indo-Pacific democracies cannot afford to pass up if they really intend to create their own supply chain independent from China.

Guido Alberto Casanova is a research assistant and editorial assistant at ISPI.

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Jude Althagafi — Thu, 29 Jul 2021 19:52:38 +0000

In China, development is seen as much broader than aid. In their book ‘Going Beyond Aid’, two of China’s most prominent development economists, Justin Lin and Yan Wang, explain how “conventional development aid is inadequate to address the bottlenecks to growth in many developing and emerging market economies, including those in sub-Saharan Africa” and highlight how China relied on a combination of aid, trade, and investment to kick-start its structural transformation process. China’s own experience since the 1978 economic reforms period demonstrated the country’s impressive ability to lift hundreds of millions out of poverty through a gradual and contained approach around markets.

Therefore, it is no surprise that China applies the same approach when dealing with other developing economies, including in Africa. Focusing on economic relations, China proposes a developmental approach that differs from the West’s and challenges the Washington Consensus, based on free markets and economic liberalisation. This is reflected in China’s 2021 White Paper on International Development Cooperation, which notes that Beijing’s approach to cooperation is about “focusing on development and improving people’s lives” and “providing the means for independent development” of each country.

Following these principles, China’s engagement with African countries does not revolve exclusively around aid, but rather around the economic relationship between the two blocsaround trade, investment, development finance, and other forms of cooperation that aim to promote Africa’s growth. As such, China-Africa relations have a strong economic focus, based on mutual economic interests which have contributed to promoting the continent’s economic transformation.

The Belt and Road Initiative: Not a Game-Changer for the African continent

So, what is happening now? In terms of foreign engagement, China’s main tool is the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), officially launched in 2013. African countries only committed to participating in the Initiative between 2018 and 2019, making it too early to assess its costs and benefits for Africa.

However, much can be said looking at pre-BRI trends in terms of economic and political cooperation. As regards policies and principles, many of the ideas and concepts governing Africa-China relations before the BRI — such as China’s second Africa policy and the ‘three networks and industrialisation’ principle (san wang yi hua 三网一化, based on the construction of roads, railways, aviation networks, and on the development of the industrial sector across the continent) — already encapsulated many BRI ideas. Therefore, the BRI does not represent a break from the past, but rather a continuation of China-Africa relations along the lines already established since 2013.

More practically, one could ask whether the BRI has infused new enthusiasm in China-Africa economic relations: however, this does not seem to be the case. Trade, investment, and lending commitments between China and Africa have undergone a considerable acceleration since 2000, but they have ultimately plateaued and stabilised since 2014. Comparing pre-BRI China-Africa engagement and early BRI trends reveals that the BRI has not disrupted China-Africa relations, but rather has strengthened previous political engagement and economic trends. Therefore, while infrastructure construction remains critical in Africa, the BRI has brought any dramatic changes in the pre-existing trends.

The African Continental Free Trade Agreement: a Potential Game-Changer for Africa’s Industrialisation

For Africa, the African Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA) is more exciting than the BRI. It is a pan-African initiative led by the African Unionaimed at creating a free-trade area among all African nations with the higher aim of supporting the continent’s economic transformation by promoting industrialisation. Why? Because while African countries mainly export raw materials and primary commodities to the rest of the world, they exchange a lot of manufactured products among themselves. Therefore, by creating a large free trade area, the AfCFTA can potentially contribute to Africa’s industrialisation and ultimately to the continent’s economic transformation, representing a tangible opportunity for Africa to change its position in the global economy.

The African Union and its members are working hard to advance the initiative, developing policies and agreements (the soft infrastructure) necessary to make the AfCFTA work. But what is still missing is the hard infrastructure, the roads, bridges and ports necessary for trade. These are crucial to making sure the AfCFTA does not remain on paper alone and that the benefits actually accrue to African citizens.

The African Development Bank suggests the continent’s hard infrastructure needs about USD130–170 billion a year, with an annual financing gap in the range of $68–$108 billion. Where can such money be found? While China’s financing pipeline may be getting colder, the country remains among the leading parties willing to provide support to close Africa’s infrastructure finance gap. The Chinese government has, in fact, shown a willingness to take part in the future of the AfCFTA, with foreign minister Wang Yi explicitly supporting the initiative, not only in terms of infrastructure development but also through financial assistance and capacity building.

The AfCFTA, China, and the Rest of the World

In sum, while the BRI itself may not be a game-changer for Africa, China’s support to African infrastructure remains vital for the realisation of the African-led AfCFTA. China is signalling to African countries that it is willing to support their economic growth through infrastructure development, which could very much strengthen the China-Africa partnership at the continental level.

Recently, the G7 has made similar promises, launching the Build Back Better World (B3W) Partnership to tackle the infrastructure needs of the developing world. While details are still scarce, it seems to reveal Western countries’ renewed interests in Africa’s infrastructure after years of uncontested Chinese leadership in this area. Should the G7 initiative represent a similar — or even better — offer for Africa than what China is currently providing, it would be very much welcome.

The Italian Institute for International Political Studies (ISPI) is an independent, non-partisan, non-profit think tank providing leading research and viable policy options to government officials, business executives and the public at large wishing to better understand international issues.

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Johnny Morris — Tue, 22 Jun 2021 16:10:50 +0000

While the global logistics industry has not been a stranger to disruption this past year, the congestion at the Port of Yantian in China is starting to impact the market at an exceptionally high level. At the current pace, it’s going to be even more disruptive than the Suez Canal blockage this spring and the ongoing congestion at the Port of Long Beach/LA over the past year. This is due to the magnitude of the trade lanes and exports the port touches. Unlike the Suez Canal incident or other recent port issues, which have impacted a more limited number of regions and trade lanes, the Port of Yantian is a major export hub for multiple large markets like Europe, North America, Latin America and Oceania.

This disruption also came on top of an already brittle logistics system which is currently grappling with several unprecedented challenges, including equipment shortages and decreased schedule reliability, to name a few. Right now, the reliability that the vessel carrying your goods or expected to pick up your goods will show up on time is roughly 5%. At this time last year, it was around 80%+. And, as ocean carriers introduce more blank sailings or skip ports to start improving the reliability percentage, that means the freight that was skipped is now added to the backlog of containers that will flow into the next vessel.

It’s likely we won’t see a large shift in congestion until the demand levels out. And while this market does not lend itself to a silver-bullet solution, there are things shippers can do to keep their supply chain afloat:

1. Be open to hyper flexibility

While flexibility is important any time global logistics are involved, the phrase ‘now more than ever’ holds true here. Currently, delays at the Port of Yantian are ranging from 10-15 days, which is a large jump from the 2-7 day delays we experienced just few weeks back.

Switching between ports, modes, and trade lanes has been an active strategy to avoid these delays, but shippers can’t rely on only adjusting once or twice since other shippers are also making these shifts as they compete for limited space. A good example of how this plays out is in the case of congestion at the Port of Oakland. Over the last few months, as the delays at the LA port were mounting, carriers started diverting sailings to Oakland. The result? Oakland is now also severely congested and suffering from the same unpredictability.

Fact remains, ocean carriers are deploying the most capacity on the U.S. west coast (USWC) routing, and as complexities in the interior of the U.S. continue to be exacerbated (i.e. lack of chassis and rail congestions), carriers continue to limit options for containers moving inland. Shippers need to continue to be flexible in enabling containers terminating on the USWC and leveraging transloading and trucking inland options.

When considering flexibility across modes, keep in mind air may be the solution for a few shipments, but it’s not a feasible option to shift all your ocean freight to air. Instead, exploring a mix of modes, like LCL + air, may offer a more realistic opportunity for your company in a more cost-competitive way. Having the right partner with a global suite of service and technology offerings coupled with scale and a strong inland network, is going to make the difference for supply chains in the market.

2. Prepare for ultra-prioritization

Prepare to make tough decisions on what freight is most important to move. This can be especially difficult for companies importing seasonal items, like patio furniture or pools since their selling window is limited.

With today’s demand, most shippers would classify all their freight as a top priority but shipping it all at once may not be realistic. It’s important to sit down and have those conversations now so when the opportunity presents itself for portions of your freight to move, like in an LCL shipment, you’re ready to make the call.

3. Don’t dismiss historical data

I’ve been in the business 20 years and never seen anything like this in a global magnitude, impacting almost all core trades. However, a unique situation does not mean historical data no longer lends itself to helping us find solutions.

The market will improve, and things will get better. However, these issues tend to be cyclical as we look at the data. We need to build resiliency around supply chain and continue to have options to navigate. While some of these events are hard to predict and plan, there are things that you can do, such as diversifying distribution center locations, sourcing, etc.

Final Thoughts

Until the high demand subsides, the above points will be crucial moving forward. C.H. Robinson has always been focused on working alongside our customers to help them succeed – and that’s no less true during times of incomparable volatility. It’s important to keep an open line of communication and to be open to creative solutions.

Sri Laxmana is the vice president of global ocean product at C.H. Robinson. He is currently responsible for driving the global strategy, revenue and ocean freight volumes.

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Johnny Morris — Mon, 14 Jun 2021 13:45:30 +0000

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken made headlines last week when he signaled during congressional testimony that the United States would be resuming its suspended trade dialogue with Taiwan. U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai followed up by meeting virtually with her Taiwanese counterpart last Thursday, where they agreed to convene the Trade and Investment Framework Agreement (TIFA) Council “in the coming weeks.” This is a welcome and overdue development, but it is still not enough. Instead, the time is ripe for the United States to begin negotiations with Taiwan on a comprehensive bilateral trade agreement.

Taiwan is the United States’ ninth-largest trading partner and its seventh-largest destination for agricultural exports, with total trade in goods valued at $90 billion in 2020. Trade with Taiwan supports over two hundred thousand U.S. jobs. Taiwan also occupies a central position in global technology supply chains, in particular semiconductors. The United States trades more with Taiwan than it does with India, France, or Italy. Beyond trade, Taiwan is an important partner on regional and global issues, working with the United States on everything from climate change to global health, anticorruption, women’s empowerment, sustainable development, and counterterrorism.

The United States and Taiwan signed a Trade and Investment Framework Agreement (TIFA) in 1994, which provides a forum for officials from the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) to meet with their Taiwanese counterparts to discuss and hopefully resolve irritants to bilateral trade and investment. Since 2007, the trade relationship has not been able to get past Taiwan’s barriers to U.S. agricultural exports. The main stumbling block has been Taiwan’s ban on imports of U.S. pork and beef because they often contain ractopamine, an additive (currently also banned in the European Union and China) that promotes leanness. To signal its displeasure with Taiwan’s stance, USTR suspended TIFA talks, resuming them from 2013 to 2016 (after Taiwan allowed some beef imports containing ractopamine), before the Trump administration suspended them again in 2017.

Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen, a trade negotiator by training, recognized the primary hurdle as well as the importance of improving trade ties with the United States. After handily winning reelection, in August 2020 President Tsai announced that she would remove the ban, to significant domestic political backlash. This policy change is now subject to a nonbinding referendum that will be held in August. The Trump administration, despite all its talk about the importance of U.S.-Taiwan relations, did not initiate trade talks, reportedly because it was concerned that doing so would prompt China to walk away from the phase one trade deal.

USTR has identified remaining issues that could be addressed during negotiations, namely Taiwan’s barriers on agricultural products, in particular rice, genetically modified foods, ground beef, and animal byproducts. USTR likely also would push Taiwan to lower tariffs on distilled spirits, large motorcycles, and soda ash, and create a more level playing field in the pharmaceutical and medical device sectors. There is also scope for Taiwan to more effectively combat copyright infringement, especially with respect to online piracy, and to provide greater access to its cloud computing market. Progress on these issues should be attainable.

Despite a general lack of appetite for new free-trade agreements, there appears to be a large degree of congressional support for a deal with Taiwan. In the fall of 2020, a bipartisan group of fifty senators signed a letter calling on then-U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer to begin working toward a comprehensive trade agreement with Taiwan. This followed a similar bipartisan letter signed by 161 members of the House in 2019 and the passage in 2020 of the Taiwan International Protection and Enhancement Initiative (TAIPEI) Act by unanimous consent, which called on USTR to further strengthen bilateral trade and economic relations with Taiwan.

This strong bipartisan support reflects an appreciation of Taiwan’s constructive role on regional and global issues and recognition that Taiwan’s continued security is critical to regional stability in the Asia-Pacific. As China’s military strength and confidence increase, the United States needs to find additional ways to continue to deter Chinese adventurism. In addition to the economic merits of a trade deal, this development would also send a strong signal to China on the importance the United States places in its relationship with Taiwan and increase Taiwan’s confidence, allowing Taipei to approach the mainland from a position of strength.

China’s strategy for Taiwan is to employ a range of tools in an attempt to cause Taiwan’s twenty-four million people to conclude that their only viable future is to join China. In the economic realm, it has cut tourism to Taiwan, banned imports of Taiwanese pineapples, and most importantly sought to marginalize Taiwan in international trade. Although Taiwan is a member of the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum, it is not a member of the two largest regional trade groupings, the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CP-TPP) that includes Canada, Japan, Mexico, and eight other countries and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) that includes China, Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) countries. Taiwan is excluded largely because members fear Chinese retaliation. Taiwan only has two free trade agreements with countries that do not maintain diplomatic relations with the island – deals with Singapore and New Zealand – and China has pressured other countries not to conclude trade agreements with Taiwan. This despite the fact that China signed an Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA) with Taiwan in 2010, which significantly reduced tariffs and trade barriers. There is a well-founded fear that without the ability to join in trade liberalization, Taiwan’s economy will fall behind, which would add to China’s leverage over the island. A U.S.-Taiwan trade deal, however, could provide political cover for other countries to begin negotiations of their own with Taipei.

While resuming TIFA talks is a positive step, this dialogue alone is unlikely to generate enough momentum toward a trade agreement. The time is ripe to be more ambitious. President Tsai has three years left in her second term, and because she does not have to stand for reelection she is in a position to spend political capital to finalize a trade deal with the United States. Her successor, regardless of political party, will be unlikely to make the necessary concessions during a first term. President Tsai, who has focused on diversifying Taiwan’s economy away from China (with mixed success), would view a trade agreement with the United States as an important part of her legacy, and can be expected to negotiate in good faith.

A U.S.-Taiwan trade agreement would increase the island’s economic and national security while further opening an important market for U.S. exports. It would signal support for an important partner and underscore the U.S. interest in cross-strait stability. The time is right for an ambitious U.S.-Taiwan trade agenda.

David Sacks is a research fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, where his work focuses on U.S.-China relations, U.S.-Taiwan relations, bodog online casino Chinese foreign policy, cross-Strait relations, and the political thought of Hans Morgenthau. He was previously the Special Assistant to the President for Research at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Jennifer A. Hillman is a senior fellow for trade and international political economy at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), specializing in U.S. trade policy, the law and politics of the World Trade Organization (WTO), international organizations, and Brexit.

To read the full commentary from the Council on Foreign Relations, please visit here

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Diego A — Fri, 16 Apr 2021 15:39:01 +0000

Despite being a tiny, 14,000-square-mile island of 23.5 million citizens, Taiwan plays an outsize role when it comes to America’s economic and national security interests. Taiwan is a key strategic ally, a fellow techno-democracy committed to the principles of free markets and free societies, and a critical economic partner whose technology companies play an important role in enabling U.S. competitiveness in advanced-technology industries.

This is particularly true for the semiconductor sector. Many U.S. companies depend upon Taiwanese enterprises to produce the semiconductors designed in the U.S. As such, U.S. policymakers must recognize the pivotal role Taiwan plays in America’s East Asian security framework, and pursue a range of policies designed to deepen the economic, innovation, trade and security linkages between the two allies.

The economic relationship between Taiwan and the United States is tremendously important. The statistics bear this out: Taiwan is America’s 10th-largest goods trading partner and 13th-largest goods export destination, with U.S. goods-and-services trade with Taiwan totaling $103.9 billion in 2019. Conversely, the U.S. is Taiwan’s second-largest trading partner, accounting for 13.2% of Taiwan’s total trade and receiving about one-third of Taiwan’s exports of information and communications technology (ICT) goods. Foreign direct investment (FDI) also represents an important facet of the relationship, with the U.S. FDI stock in Taiwan reaching $17.4 billion in 2019, and Taiwan’s in the U.S. totaling $11.1 billion in 2019, up 5.6% from 2018.

However, as the Congressional Research Service has written, “U.S. data on trade with Taiwan may understate the importance of Taiwan to the U.S. economy because of the role of global supply chains.” For instance, 86% of Taiwan’s exports to the U.S. comprise intermediate goods, such as semi-finished products, parts and capital goods, that U.S. companies use to make final products. Indeed, Taiwanese inputs play a critical role in U.S.-manufactured final products in a wide range of industries, and not just for ICT goods but also others including medical devices and pharmaceuticals, automobiles (especially electric vehicles), heavy machinery and transportation equipment. In fact, the United States has deeper inter-industry trade linkages with Taiwan than with almost any other East Asian trade partner: The percentage of Taiwan’s exports feeding into the U.S. global supply chain is greater than that of Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand combined.

But there’s one industry where U.S.-Taiwan economic and trade ties are more important than any other: semiconductors. Semiconductors represent the lifeblood of the modern digital economy, powering everything from automobiles and smartphones to satellites and medical devices. Taiwan now accounts for 20% of global semiconductor wafer production capacity. That figure alone might not catch the eye, but the nation now accounts for 92% of all semiconductor production at process nodes less than 10 nm—that is, the world’s most sophisticated and most important chips. The U.S. and Taiwan have for years been moving in opposite directions in terms of semiconductor fabrication capacity: In 1990, the United States held a 37% share of global semiconductor manufacturing and Taiwan but a few percent, but by 2020 America’s share had fallen to 12%.

TSMC’s Revolutionary Business Model

Taiwan’s great semiconductor success story is in part a result of effective government planning, but most of the credit goes to Morris Chang, founder of the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. TSMC pioneered the foundry business model, concentrating on contract manufacturing for other “fabless” semiconductor companies (those without semiconductor fabrication factories of their own). These fabless companies focus on research and design; examples include AMD (chips for AI, HPC and graphics), NVIDIA (graphics chips), and Qualcomm (5G and other wireless chips).

Not only are TSMC and other Taiwanese foundry players key suppliers to many U.S. enterprises, but in many cases the business models of many American chipmakers would be fundamentally impossible without these Taiwanese suppliers. In fact, U.S. companies—whether fabless players such as AMD, NVIDIA or Qualcomm, or manufacturers of consumer electronics goods such as Apple—account for 65% of global demand for fabless semiconductor manufacturing. In turn, Taiwanese companies now account for 78% of value-added output (in terms of revenues generated) from the global foundry-based semiconductor sector. Apple alone accounts for one-quarter of TSMC’s revenues.Such has been TSMC’s success that it now accounts for over half the world’s market for made-to-order chips, commands 90% of global market share for the most advanced semiconductors (sub 7 nm) in production, and will soon open the most advanced (3 nm) semiconductor fab in the world. It also arguably now leads the world in private-sector capital expenditures, announcing in April 2021 that it would invest $100 billion over the next three years to help meet growing global semiconductor demand.

However, it should be noted that Taiwan accounts for 45% of U.S. exports of semiconductor manufacturing equipment (i.e., the tools that run the fabs). Further, the importance of this relationship doesn’t pertain solely to ICT goods. Semiconductors represent an increasingly important input to cars—with the average vehicle requiring anywhere from 50 to 150 semiconductors and the newest electric vehicles using as many as 3,000. Accordingly, the ongoing global semiconductor shortage has exerted a tremendous impact on the industry, resulting in as many as 672,000 fewer cars being manufactured in the first quarter of 2021, compared with automakers’ anticipated production going into the quarter.

Bolstering the U.S.-Taiwan Relationship

Given Taiwan’s importance to the U.S., policymakers in Washington should be seeking to strengthen the relationship. One place they can start is trade. First, the U.S. should move beyond the existing Trade and Investment Framework Agreement between the U.S. and Taiwan (which provides a strategic framework and principles for dialogue on trade and investment issues) and pursue negotiation of a bilateral U.S.-Taiwan free trade agreement, which would further enhance trade linkages between, and improve the competitiveness of, both nations. A U.S.-Taiwan FTA would help ensure that Taiwan has stable access to the U.S. market, promote political stability in the country, and increase growth and employment in both nations.

Specifically, analysts estimate that a U.S.-Taiwan FTA would increase U.S. GDP by $3.5 billion, decrease the U.S. trade deficit with Taiwan by 75%, and generate an additional 27,000 U.S. jobs. Another step is for the U.S. to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership and bring Taiwan in with it. The U.S. can also champion Taiwanese participation in international fora—which China often seeks to block—such as the International Civil Aviation Organization, Interpol and the World Health Organization.

The U.S. can also collaborate more closely with Taiwan to promote innovation, both in semiconductors and across other fields. For instance, in 2018 Taiwan announced a new “Five Plus Two” innovation strategy, which aims to expand industries and projects related to the internet of things, biotechnology, green energy, smart technology and defense (“Five”) while also promoting agricultural efficiency and a circular economy—that is, economic systems that are more sustainable in terms of environment and resiliency concerns (“Plus Two”).

Here, the recently created U.S.-Taiwan Economic Prosperity Partnership Dialogue represents an important start, but it could go further by setting up an Innovation Experts Working Group that would act as an integrated platform for collaboration and cooperation in the development of new technologies and industries. One focus could be integrating U.S. strength in software with Taiwanese strength in hardware. As the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace’s Evan Feigenbaum writes, “Taiwan has yet to transition from a hardware-dominant ecosystem to greater emphasis not just on software but especially on hardware-software integration.” And Stanford University’s Alexa Lee notes that another area ripe for cooperation would be cybersecurity.

Semiconductors should of course be a focus of U.S.-Taiwan innovation collaboration, which is already occurring, as evidenced by TSMC’s collaboration with Purdue University to open the Center for Secure Microelectronics Ecosystem. This center aims to ensure a secure supply of semiconductor chips and related tools from one end of the supply chain to the other, with a goal of developing advanced chips that could be detected or traced if security concerns arise. Programs envisioned in the Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors for America (CHIPS) Act—for which the Biden administration has sought $50 billion as part of its $2 trillion infrastructure plan—would introduce additional opportunities for collaboration, including a $750 million multilateral security fund to support development and adoption of secure microelectronics and microelectronics supply chains, as well as incentive packages that TSMC will likely avail itself of as it invests $35 billion in a new 5 nm fab in Arizona.

Finally, the Biden administration needs to articulate a new security framework with Taiwan. In particular, it is past time the U.S. abandon its policy of “strategic ambiguity” vis-à-vis Taiwan and clarify that it would come to the island’s defense if attacked. The policy of strategic ambiguity has been attributed to Joseph Nye, assistant secretary of state in the Clinton administration, who, when asked in 1995 by Chinese officials how the U.S. would react to an attack on the island, responded, “We don’t know and you don’t know. It would depend on the circumstances.”

The U.S. should make absolutely clear that it will not permit what happened to Hong Kong to happen to Taiwan, and that Taiwan’s status as a free society is inviolable. To this end, the U.S. should commit to bolstering Taiwanese security by consistently selling it more-advanced weapons systems, including the newest fighter aircraft, missiles and tanks, as the head of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, Adm. Philip Davidson, has advised.

From both an economic and a geostrategic perspective, Taiwan has become crucial to U.S. national security. A new study estimates that a hypothetical one-year disruption of the Taiwanese semiconductor supply (whether due to natural disasters or geopolitical conflict) would cost global fabless companies $80 billion in revenues and electronic device manufacturers $500 billion. If such complete disruption were to become permanent, it could take a minimum of three years and $350 billion of investment to rebuild enough capacity in the rest of the world to replace the Taiwanese foundries. It is imperative that the U.S. help Taiwan remain a free, democratic, market-based society.

This is the third article in a series titled “The Future of Taiwan.” The first article focuses on steps the U.S. can take at home and abroad to prevent a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. The second article discusses the obstacles facing a Chinese military conquest of Taiwan. In the fourth article, a Taipei journalist recounts the years of living with cross-Strait tensions.

Stephen Ezell is vice president, global innovation policy, at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF)

To read the original blog post on Discourse, please click here

Image Credit: Mari Fouz

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Anne Allen Hodge — Sat, 20 Mar 2021 15:39:55 +0000

The Biden Administration’s U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai during her confirmation hearing before the U.S. Senate Finance Committee and in written answers to questions from Senators was asked many questions about the China trade relationship and the myriad problems U.S. companies have faced in dealing with China or with Chinese imports into the U.S.. Ms. Tai noted in many answers that the “Biden-Harris Administration is engaged in a review of the policies in place to respond to China’s coercive and unfair trade practices * * *. I understand that a comprehensive strategy to confront the China challenge will be formulated based on that review.” Answer to Question 15 from Ranking Member Crapo (page 8).

Among the dozens of questions she received on China, Ms. Tai received a number that involved the U.S.-China Phase One Trade Agreement. For example, in response to a question from Senator Thune, Ms. Tai indicated that she would “assess China’s compliance with the Phase One deal to ensure it is living up to its commitments.” See Senate Finance Committee, Hearing to Consider the Nomination of Katherine C. Tai, of the District of Columbia, to be United States Trade Representative, with the rank of Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary, Hearing Date: February 25, 2021, Questions for the Record, page 41, Senator Thune, Question 2, answer, https://www.finance.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Katherine%20Tai%20Senate%20Finance%20Committee%20QFRs%202.28.2021.pdf. The full question and answer are copied below.

“Question 2:

“As a result of the U.S.-China Phase One trade deal, the U.S. has seen export gains to China across many agricultural sectors including soybeans, corn, beef, and pork.

“If confirmed, how would you ensure that China follows through on its Phase One commitments, particularly for U.S. agriculture? What steps would you take to build upon these successes and ensure that U.S. farm and ranch exports to China are not unfairly restricted by tariff and nontariff barriers?

“Answer: The Biden-Harris Administration is engaged in a review of the policies in place to respond to China’s coercive and unfair trade practices, including with respect to agricultural products. I understand that a comprehensive strategy to confront the China challenge will be formulated based on that review. If confirmed, as part of that comprehensive review, I will assess China’s compliance with the Phase One deal to ensure it is living up to its commitments.“

Thus, one can expect that USTR under Amb. Tai will be continuing to monitor China’s implementation and enforcement of a wide range of changes to regulations an d practices intended to remove non-tariff barriers as well as tracking Chinese purchases of U.S. goods against the Annex 6.1 commitments made by China in the Phase I Agreement.

As reported in prior posts, both China and the U.S. have taken steps to implement parts of the Phase 1 Agreement that took effect on February 14, 2020, although the level of actual implementation remains unclear.

Prior posts on the U.S.-China Phase 1 Agreement can be found here: February 6, 2021, U.S.-China Phase I Trade Agreement – data through December 2020; China has increased purchases of agricultural and energy products above 2017 levels but did not reach first year agreed purchases in 2020 and won’t reached the agreed level even if measured from March 2020-February 2021, https://currentthoughtsontrade.com/2021/02/06/u-s-china-phase-1-trade-agreement-data-through-december-2020-china-has-increased-purchases-of-agricultural-and-energy-products-above-2017-levels-but-did-not-reach-first-year-agreed-purchases-in/; January 9, 2021, U.S.-China Phase 1 Trade Agreement — Data through November 2020; China has increased purchases of agricultural and energy products above 2017 levels but will not reach first year agreed purchases in 2020 whether measured on a calendar basis or on a March 2020-February 2021 basis, https://currentthoughtsontrade.com/2021/01/09/u-s-china-phase-1-trade-agreement-data-through-november-2020-china-has-increased-purchases-of-agricultural-and-energy-products-above-2017-levels-but-will-not-reach-first-year-agreed-purchases-in/; December 10, 2020, U.S.-China Phase I Trade Agreement – data through October 2020; while China has increased purchases of agricultural and some other products, China remains far behind on the agreed purchases in 2020 whether measured on a calendar basis or on a March 2020-February 2021 basis, https://currentthoughtsontrade.com/2020/12/10/u-s-china-phase-1-trade-agreement-data-through-october-2020-while-china-has-increased-purchases-of-agricultural-and-some-other-products-china-remains-far-behind-on-the-agreed-purchases-in-2020-w/; November 13, 2020, U.S.-China Phase 1 trade agreement – Data through September 2020; USDA and USTR report on agriculture portion, https://currentthoughtsontrade.com/2020/11/13/u-s-china-phase-1-trade-agreement-data-through-september-2020-usda-and-ustr-report-on-agriculture-portion/; October 10, 2020, U.S.-China Phase I Trade Agreement – first six months data on U.S. exports (March-August 2020) covered by the purchase commitments show China needing to triple purchases in next five months to meet first year commitments, https://currentthoughtsontrade.com/2020/10/10/u-s-china-phase-1-trade-agreement-first-six-months-data-on-u-s-exports-march-august-2020-covered-by-the-purchase-commitments-show-china-needing-to-triple-purchases-in-next-six-months-to-meet-fi/; September 12, 2020, U.S.-China Phase I Trade Agreement – How is China Doing to Meet Purchase Commitments for the First Year; a Review of U.S. Domestic Exports through July 2020, https://currentthoughtsontrade.com/2020/09/12/u-s-china-phase-1-trade-agreement-how-is-china-doing-to-meet-purchase-commitments-for-the-first-year-a-review-of-u-s-domestic-exports-through-july-2020/; August 8, 2020, U.S.-China Phase 1 trade agreement – review of U.S. domestic exports through June 2020, https://currentthoughtsontrade.com/2020/08/08/u-s-china-phase-1-trade-agreement-review-of-u-s-domestic-exports-through-june-2020/; July 10, 2020, U.S.-China Phase 1 Trade Agreement – limited progress on increased U.S. exports to China (through May), https://currentthoughtsontrade.com/2020/07/10/u-s-china-phase-1-trade-agreement-limited-progress-on-increased-u-s-exports-to-china-through-may/; June 5, 2020, U.S.-China Phase I Deal is Failing Expanded U.S. Exports Even Before Recent Efforts by China to Limit Certain U.S. Agriculture Exports as Retaliation for U.S. Position on Hong Kong, https://currentthoughtsontrade.com/2020/06/05/u-s-china-phase-i-deal-is-failing-expanded-u-s-exports-even-before-recent-efforts-by-china-to-limit-certain-u-s-agriculture-exports-as-retaliation-for-u-s-position-on-hong-kong/; May 12, 2020, U.S.-China Phase I Agreement – some progress on structural changes; far behind on trade in goods and services, https://currentthoughtsontrade.com/2020/05/12/u-s-china-phase-i-agreement-some-progress-on-structural-changes-far-behind-on-trade-in-goods-and-services/; January 19, 2020, U.S.-China Phase 1 Agreement – Details on the Expanding Trade Chapter, https://currentthoughtsontrade.com/2020/01/19/u-s-china-phase-1-agreement-details-on-the-expanding-trade-chapter/; January 15, 2020, U.S.-China Phase 1 Trade Agreement Signed on January 15 – An Impressive Agreement if Enforced, https://currentthoughtsontrade.com/2020/01/15/u-s-china-phase-1-trade-agreement-signed-on-january-15-an-impressive-agreement-if-enforced/.

This post looks at U.S. export data for January 2021, a month whose data reflects basically business in the last month of the Trump Administration.

Purchase Commitments

Annex 6.1 of the Phase I Agreement contains commitments for “additional U.S. exports to China on Top of 2017 baseline” for two years, 2020 and 2021. Article 6.3 of the Agreement states that “The Parties project that the trajectory of increases in the amounts of manufactured goods, agricultural goods, energy products, and services purchased and imported into China from the United States will continue in calendar years 2022 through 2025.

The Agreement lists 18 categories of goods grouped in three broad categories (manufactured goods, agriculture and energy) and five services categories. Chinese imports of goods and services from the United States under the Agreement are supposed to increase by $76.7 billion in the first year over levels achieved in 2017 and in the second year by $123.3 billion over 2017 levels. The categories and tariff items included in the goods categories are reviewed in Annex 6.1 of the Agreement and the attachment to Annex 6.1. In the confidential version of the agreement, growth levels are provided for each of the 23 categories of goods and services.

Article 6.2 of the Agreement defines the time period for the purchase commitments as being January 1, 2020 through December 31, 2021. So the first year by agreement was calendar year 2020. Calendar year 2021 is the second year of the agreement. The level of increases in U.S. exports to China for 2021 is as follows: manufactured goods $44.8 billion on top of 2017 base line of $58.4 billion (2021 total of $103.2 billion or an increase of 76.81% over 2017 actual); agriculture (including seafood) $19.5 billion on top of 2017 base line of $20.85 billion (2021 total of $40.35 billion or an increase of 93.51% over 2017 actual); energy $33.9 billion on top of 2017 base line of $7.6 billion (2021 total of $41.5 billion or an increase of 447.95% over 2017 actual); services $25.1 billion on top of 2017 base line for the selected services of $53.033 billion (2021 total of $78.133 billion or an increase of 47.33% over 2017 actual). Increases from 2017 for the calendar year 2020 agreed levels were lower than for 2021 (increases over 2017 of $32.9 billion, $12.5 billion, $18.5 billion and $12.8 billion respectively for manufactured goods, agriculture, energy and services). The breakout of services exports is not available for 2020 or January 2021. However, U.S. exports of all services to China for 2020 were $37.921 billion vs. $54.981 billion in 2017, a decline of 31% for all services, thus, U.S. services exports covered by the Phase I Agreement declined in 2020. See U.S. Census Bureau and the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, MONTHLY U.S. INTERNATIONAL TRADE IN GOODS AND SERVICES, JANUARY 2021, March 5, 2021, page 28, Exhibit 20b, https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/Press-Release/current_press_release/ft900.pdf. While the BEA data don’t show exports of services in January by country, January 2021 total services exports are down from January 2020 (before the pandemic resulted in significant closures) with the largest reductions in travel followed by transport and by maintenance and repair services.

In 2017, the selected goods covered by Annex 6.1 were $86.795 billion of total U.S. domestic exports to China of $120.109 billion, meaning non-covered U.S. exports in 2017 were $33.314 billion. On services, the selected services covered by Annex 6.1 were $53.033 billion of total services exports to China of $54.981. So non-covered services were $1.948 billion. For goods, there were sharp declines in 2020 of U.S. exports to China of non-covered products from the levels achieved in 2017 (roughly $6.6 billion). Non-covered products are slightly up in January 2021 versus January 2017. While the services break out for 2020 is not yet available by country by type of service, total services exports to China (as reviewed above) were down 31% . The non-covered services are relatively small (just 3.5% of total services exports).

Since the Agreement took effect in mid-February, my analysis in prior posts has focused on the period since the agreement went into effect (for statistics, from March 1, 2020). This is consistent with the position that USTR and USDA took in the Trump Administration in an interim report released on October 23 looking at China’s compliance with its purchase commitments in agriculture. “It is worth noting that the Phase One Agreement did not go into effect until February 14, 2020, and March is the first full month of its effect. That means that we have seen seven months of agreement sales.” U.S. Trade Representative’s Office and U.S. Department of Agriculture, Interim Report on the Economic and Trade Agreement between the United States of America and the People’s Republic of China, AGRICULTURAL TRADE, October 23, 2020, Page 1.

March 2020-January 2021 data compared to 2017 (other than February); January 2021 compared to January 2017

For purposes of this post, I will look at the March 2020 – January 2021 data compared to January and March-December 2017 data, but I will also look at the first month of 2021 compared to January 2017. In my last post in February, I had reviewed calendar 2020 data compared to 2017 data. The data analyzed is limited to goods since the services data is more limited and has been summarized above.

Looking at U.S. domestic exports for the March 2020 – January 2021 period and projecting for a full twelve months (March 2020-February 2021) shows China meeting 94.64% of first year agriculture commitments, and 51.06% above 2017 actual levels for all months other than February. Total Phase 1 products are projected at only 61.01% of first year commitments with manufactured goods at 52.78% and energy at 44.47%. While agriculture products are projected to exceed 2017 actual by $10.7 billion and energy is projected to exceed 2017 by $4.0 billion, manufactured goods are projected to be $10.2 billion smaller than 2017 actual. Compared to first year purchase commitments, total U.S. Phase I goods exports are projected to be $59.4 billion short of the agreed first year level.

If looking at a calendar year 2021, the data for January show increases for each of the three goods categories over January 201 but each category trails the level of increase needed to meet 2021 purchase commitments. Manufactured goods are up 4.39%, but the commitment levels are 76.81% higher than 2017 actual. Similarly, on agricultural products covered by the Phase I commitments, U.S. exports are up 58.51% from 2017 compared to the 2021 increase of 98.51% over 2017 needed to meet the commitments for 2021. On energy, U.S. exports are up 150.56% over January 2017 but far below the 447.99% increase needed to meet the Phase I commitments for 2021. For all Phase I goods, U.S. exports in January are up 33.34% but the annual increase to meet the Phase I commitment is 113.14%.

To meet first year commitments on a March 2020-February 2021 basis , China would have to import monthly 7.71 times the product from the United States as was done in the first eleven months in the next month (February). On a calendar basis, U.S. domestic exports in January 2021 missed the agreed level on goods by $5.375 billion (or an amount equal to 59.49% of January 2021 actual).

Looking at total U.S. domestic exports of goods to China for the period March 2020 – January 2021., U.S. exports were $109.313 billion ($9.938 billion/month) compared to $111.099 billion in 2017 for the eleven months (all other than February)($10.100 billion/month). These include both products covered by the Annex 6.1 commitments and other products. For January 2021, total U.S. domestic exports to China were $11.254 billion compared to $9.350 billion in January 2017.

Total 2017 U.S. domestic exports of goods to China were $120.1 billion. The Phase 1 Agreement calls for increases on a subset of goods of $63.9 billion in the first year. Thus, the target for the first year of the U.S.-China Phase 1 Agreement is U.S. exports to China of $184 billion if non-subject goods are exported at 2017 levels.

Other U.S. domestic exports not covered by the 18 categories in Annex 6.1 were $33.314 billion in 2017 (full year) and $30.806 billion for 2017 excluding February. For the period March 2020 – January 2021, non-covered products (which face significant tariffs in China based on retaliation for US 301 duties) have declined 18.86%, and total exports to China are down 1.61%. Looking at January 2021, other U.S. domestic exports (i.e., not covered by the Phase I Agreement) were down 13.05% from comparable levels in January 2017.

Thus, the first eleven months since the U.S.-China Phase 1 Agreement went into effect suggest that U.S. domestic exports of the Annex 6 goods will be $91.334 billion if the full year shows the same level of increase over 2017 for each of the 18 categories of goods; non-covered products would be $26.845 billion, for total U.S. domestic exports to China of $118.179 billion. This figure would be below 2017 and dramatically below the target of $184.0 billion (if noncovered products remain are at 2017 levels; $176.938 billion with noncovered products at estimated March 2020 – February 2021 levels) . The projected U.S. domestic exports to China would, however, be higher than the $109.72 billion in 2018 and the depressed figure of $94.100 billion in 2019.

If one looks at January 2021, U.S. domestic exports to China of Annex 6 goods were $8.981 billion, other exports of $2.274 billion, for total domestic exports in January 2021 of $11.254 billion, ahead of January 2017 but $5.375 billion behind the 2021 rate of increase over 2017 of 113.14%.

The 18 product categories included in Annex 6.1 of the Phase 1 Agreement show the following for January, March-December 2017, March 2020 – January 2021 and rate of growth for the first year of the Agreement (figures in $ million):

Product category	January, March-December 2017	March 2020 -January 2021	% change 11 mos. 2017 2020/2021	$ Value needed in next month to reach 1st year of Agreement vs. projected 1st year
manufactured goods
1. industrial machinery	$10,013.7	$11,612.1	+15.96%
2. electrical equipment and machinery	$3,966.0	$4,460.9	+12.48%
3. pharma- ceutical products	$1,939.6	$3,017.0	+55.54%
4. aircraft (orders and deliveries)	$15,212.8	$3,682.4	-75.79%
5. vehicles	$9,132.1	$5,659.5	-38.03%
6. optical and medical instruments	$2,901.3	$3,317.9	+14.36%
7. iron and steel	$1,093.3	$454.4	-58.44%
8. other manufactured goods	$10,092.7	$12,654.8	+25.39%
Total for mfg goods	$54,351.7	$44,858.9	-17.47%	$43,094.5
Agriculture
9. oilseeds	$11,171.5	$15,785.7	+41.30%
10. meat	$511.7	$2,968.5	+480.16%
11. cereals	$1,276.5	$3,384.2	+165.13%
12. cotton	$828.1	$1,855.8	+124.11%
13. other agricultural commodities	$4,148.3	$4,219.4	+1.71%
14. seafood	$1,173.6	$653.7	-44.30%
Total for agriculture	$19,109.7	$28,867.4	+51.06%	$1,788.7
Energy
15. liquefied natural gas	$365.8	$1,597.2	+336.6%
16. crude oil	$3,865.3	$6,881.4	+78.03%
17. refined products	$2,197.4	$1,655.9	-24.64%
18. coal	$403.4	$242.3	-39.94%
Total for energy	$6,831.9	$10,376.9	+51.89%	$14,477.9
Total for 1-18	$80,293.3	$84,103.2	+4.75%	$59,361.0

Conclusion

As reviewed in prior posts, the U.S.-China Phase 1 Agreement is a potentially important agreement which attempts to address a range of U.S. concerns with the bilateral relationship and obtain somewhat better reciprocity with the world’s largest exporter. The Phase 1 Agreement has left other challenges to a Phase 2 negotiation which has not yet begun. USTR Tai has indicated that the Biden Administration will monitor compliance by China with the terms of the Phase I Agreement.

While there has been some progress on non-trade volume issues that are included in the Phase 1 Agreement and some significant improvements in exports of U.S. agricultural goods, there has been very little forward movement in expanding total U.S. exports of goods to China in fact and a sharp decline in U.S. exports of services to China.

The differences in economic systems between China and the United States have made reliance on WTO rules less relevant to the Trump Administration as those rules presume market-based economies and presently don’t address the myriad distortions that flow from the Chinese state capital system. Thus, the Phase I Agreement was an effort to move the needle in trade relations with China to achieve greater reciprocity. It has had some limited success to date. While the Biden Administration is doing a full review of the challenges posed by China’s trade policies, it is good news that they will be working to see that the Phase I Agreement is fulfilled.

Terence Stewart, former Managing Partner, Law Offices of Stewart and Stewart, and author of the blog, bodog poker review|Most Popular_Congressional

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Emily Kachinski — Fri, 29 Jan 2021 17:41:22 +0000

One of the most serious challenges President Joe Biden faces is China’s growing military power and the technologies behind that. He and his advisors underscore that, in contrast with the Trump administration, they will work closely with European and Asian allies to address this challenge. This collaboration will be challenging as the China challenge is so multi-faceted and different allies bring different perspectives to each facet.

Most European and Asian governments agree with the United States that China’s growing military might presents a strategic threat in Asia, and that its industrial subsidies and forced technology transfers are a problem. That said, they were repelled by the Trump administration’s unilateral power-based tactics and differed with it and among themselves about the nature of the threat China presents.

The Biden administration must recognize and work with these differences. In particular, it must bring a nuanced approach to the issue of national-security controls on the leakage of critical technologies that promote China’s military capabilities.

Japan is all too aware of the consequences of this leakage: it lives daily with Chinese incursions into its air and maritime space. European countries do not “feel” the problem the same way: they are farther away and have more difficulty disentangling economic issues from national security concerns.

Europe is, however, becoming more sensitive due to China’s human-rights violations in Xinjiang, its stifling of Hong Kong’s political voice, its disregard for international law in the East and South China Seas, its bombastic coronavirus “diplomacy” over the past year, and the complaints of industry about its economic policies. All these concerns have already had an impact on European policy, as the EU has toughened its laws against subsidies and dumping, introduced a “screening mechanism” to regulate acquisitions of European companies, and updated its controls on technology exports.

The Biden administration can build on these steps, but it must understand and work with the nuance of the changes in European policy, while at the same time helping Europe better understand the nature of the problem.

The Changing National Security/Technology Problem

Working with Europe to stem the leakage of critical technologies that could boost China’s military capabilities is important because the types of technologies relevant to defense has broadened and because the EU’s role in this has changed significantly.

Traditionally, the United States and its allies relied on their technological dominance to offset Russia and China’s numerical military superiority, with tactical nuclear weapons in the 1960s and precision and stealth technologies in the 1970s and 1980s. These first two “offset strategies” were driven and owned by governments working with large defense contractors. This made it easier for governments to control the export of the relatively limited universe of “dual-use” technologies that had civilian and military applications, whether by requiring licenses under the Coordinating Committee on Multilateral Export Controls (CoCom) or through screening foreign acquisitions of firms (for example, by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, or CFIUS).

The Obama administration recognized that the U.S. lead in “dual-use” technologies had eroded, and that the commercial sector had developed a wide range of new technologies that could have military applications, including in sensing, computing, data analytics and deep machine learning, communications and systems integration, robotics, genetic engineering, and many other fields. This explosion in “dual-use” technologies as well as in the universe of companies developing them led the Obama administration to develop a “third offset strategy,” predicated on working with the private sector in the United States, Europe, and elsewhere to stay one step ahead of the “quick followers” in China and elsewhere.

At the same time, the Defense Department saw China using open and covert means to acquire a wide range of advanced technologies. The report it commissioned from the CEO of the cyber-security firm Symantec, Michael Brown, on Chinese technology acquisition practices was completed at the end of 2016. It led in 2018 to the Trump administration’s tough approach to China’s “technology theft” (the trigger for the trade war) as well as to the adoption of the Foreign Investment Risk Review Modernization Act and the Export Control Reform Act. Both acts are tied to the ongoing U.S. government effort to identify “emerging and foundational” dual-use technologies that should be subject to export and investment-screening controls, which Washington hopes other countries will help enforce.

Europe’s Evolving Approach

The same trends—the technological advances of China and Russia, the broadening expanse of dual-use technologies, and the growing number of Europe’s own high-tech firms—have changed Europe’s approach to technology and national security as well—although perhaps not as much as the United States might want.

Despite enormous strides in integration, European countries jealously guard their sovereignty over national security and defense. Under the treaties creating the EU, national security is explicitly reserved as a “competence” of member states.

This creates tensions with export controls in the EU and European Economic Area (EEA), as the non-military part of “dual use” falls into the EU’s single market, in which products flow freely. Member states accordingly limited the EU role in export licensing merely to transposing into EU law decisions made in other fora: the Wassenaar Arrangement on Export Controls for Conventional Arms and Dual Use Goods and Technologies (CoCom’s successor), the Nuclear Suppliers Group, the Australia Group (for Chemical Weapons), and the Missile Technology Control Regime. This grudging inclusion of the EU ensured that those member states not in the different multilateral arms-control regimes would also control exports of designated items.

This grated on the European Commission, which believed the single market and common commercial policy justified a more substantive EU role. It therefore jumped on the European Parliament’s anger at reports that European surveillance and crowd-control products were used to suppress the Arab Spring, and recommended in 2016 that the EU revise its export-control regulation significantly to allow the EU to license things and technologies that had not been listed by the multilateral regimes. While this initiative was supported by the European Parliament, the member states had serious reservations about giving the EU more powers in this domain, leading to four years of debate.

Similarly, the European Commission leapt on the concerns caused by a surge of Chinese investment in 2015-2016, including the acquisition of one of Germany’s leading robotics companies, KUKA, as well as the attempted acquisition of Aixtron, a German firm that makes key inputs for semiconductor production. The European Commission’s 2017 proposal for an EU “screening mechanism” for inward investment sidestepped member-state sensitivities by making the EU a center of exchange of information about foreign acquisitions of firms. It also succeeded in excluding “competitiveness” and “reciprocity” from the scope of the review, as these go against the EU’s generally open approach to foreign investment. As a result, this proposal was adopted in 2019, and entered into force in 2020.

The EU’s New Export-Control Regulation

The reluctance of member states reluctance to have the EU wade into dual-use export controls was worn down by the growing concerns about China’s technology acquisition as documented by the business sector and the U.S. and Japanese governments, including with regard to Huawei and 5G. But China’s repression of the Uighurs and its heavy-handed approach in Hong Kong also changed the calculations, especially as the European Commission and European Parliament couched the need for a new regime as critical to protecting human rights.

The new regulation—which was agreed by the EU Council and the European Parliament last November but is not yet formally adopted—makes important changes to the EU export-control system that allies can work with as they strengthen efforts to prevent the leakage of dual-use technologies to China and Russia. Indeed, even the change in the form of the law, from a regulation of the Council to one of the Council and the Parliament, is important, as it engages the EU itself in an issue once considered the purview of the member states.

Further, new provisions allow the EU to adopt “autonomous” export-control authorizations for cyber-surveillance equipment/technology (Article 4a) and for other purposes (Article 8a). While the former got attention in the human-rights debate, the latter is potentially more important. The new EU approach in both cases is bottom-up: the move to require an EU-level export license must start with a member state adopting a licensing requirement (that is, the European Commission cannot itself propose products or technologies to be controlled).

In the case of cyber-surveillance equipment/technology, if a member state lists something that is not restricted by the four main export-control regimes noted above, that starts an automatic process that compels the other member states to follow suit within a specific period. The EU can adopt a licensing requirement when all have done so.

Article 8a on other “autonomous” EU controls is far more nebulous. It starts again with a member state requiring a license for equipment/technology on public-security (including terrorism) or human-rights grounds, but then simply requires notification of the European Commission and other member states without further elaboration. But the article gets some power from a preambular paragraph, which explains that this is meant to be to “enable the Union to react rapidly to serious misuse of existing technologies, or to new risks associated with emerging technologies” by helping member states coordinate their response to a new risk, although they should also thereafter start efforts to “introduce equivalent controls at the multilateral level.”

Article 8a also refers to the “end-user,” which arguably allows the EU to adopt export-licensing requirements for specific end-users and/or end-use. This is particularly important with respect to China, although most EU governments dislike establishing controls by destination country.

Making the Best of It

For many, the EU’s new investment-screening and export-control laws will appear feeble next to the immediate threat of China’s growing ability to project military power in Asia. But any effort to stem the flow of technologies to China’s military establishment must be multilateral, precisely because the range of technologies and the number of firms developing them has expanded so much. While U.S., Japanese, and other authorities will naturally work with the European countries that are members of Wassenaar and NATO, the EU process is also essential to plug leaks through the EU/EEA Single Market.

In helping strengthen the implementation of the EU laws, the United States and other countries can and should ramp up information and intelligence sharing with their European counterparts at the national, EU, and NATO levels. This is critical to explain that China, Russia, and other countries could use certain technologies for military purposes. They will also need to find countries that are willing to help launch the EU processes by listing certain technologies (and possibly end-uses/users). Finally, as it develops guidance for the investment-screening and export-control laws, they can work with the European Commission, whose guidance documents, such as those on dual-use research and electronic licensing, can be very influential.

In so doing, however, the United States and other countries should make clear that their interest is based on national security and/or human bodog poker review rights. Although the EU has more powers in economic policy, concepts like “competitiveness” and “reciprocity” are too easily used for policies that undermine the EU’s generally open approach to trade and investment. They will also need to emphasize their intent to bring any controls ultimately to the multilateral level, as this remains politically important in Europe.

Achieving effective European action on preventing the leakage of critical technologies to China will not be easy, in part as EU engagement in this area is still novel. But a concerted and well-thought through approach will be appreciated by Europe’s allies and could be effective as well.

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Ann Marie Caton — Mon, 30 Nov 2020 14:43:34 +0000

Although President Donald Trump has not conceded the United States presidential election and is mounting multiple dubious legal challenges to the results, President-elect Joe Biden is moving ahead with the transition. While Biden did not focus on Southeast Asia during his time as vice president from 2009 until 2017, he probably has more extensive foreign policy experience than any incoming president in decades, save perhaps George H. W. Bush. In addition, his policy team includes a deep bench of experts on the Asia-Pacific region.

When it comes to Biden’s approach to Southeast Asia, persistent tensions in the U.S. relationship with China are a major factor. While perhaps less openly confrontational toward China than Trump has been, many of the Democratic Party’s foreign policy experts have become much more distrustful of Beijing in recent years and convinced that the United States’ previous strategies have failed. The incoming Biden administration probably will recognize that, to pursue a tough approach against China, the U.S. cannot afford to alienate critical partners in Southeast Asia, the way the Trump administration has done. Biden is also likely to reinvest in some areas of American power that were neglected under Trump, from diplomacy to a renewed focus on nontraditional security threats like climate change, which will appeal to Southeast Asian states.

Many countries in the region are growing more distrustful of China as well, given its increasingly aggressive behavior and its expansive territorial claims in the South China Sea, but Southeast Asia cannot divorce itself from Beijing. China is the region’s biggest trading partner and the largest aid donor to several Southeast Asian states. Still, countries like Singapore and Vietnam, and even to some extent Malaysia and Indonesia, have grown increasingly concerned about China’s heavy-handed approach to the region and have quietly applauded some of the Trump administration’s tough measures toward Beijing.

As president, Biden’s approach to the region will in some respects resemble Trump’s. He likely will continue to rebalance the U.S. military toward the Asia-Pacific, boosting regional military cooperation with allies in the region and continuing to harden U.S. defenses and those of its allies. Like Trump, Biden will also need to find ways to counter Chinese influence activities in the U.S. and elsewhere, and will continue pressuring other countries to keep Chinese firms like Huawei out of their new 5G telecommunications networks, though he will have less success with this strategy in Asia than in Europe.

Yet Biden might diverge in how he tries to attract other countries to support his China policy. Trump’s trade disputes with many Southeast Asian countries made it harder for them to align with Washington on other issues. For example, the Trump administration repeatedly criticized Vietnam for its high trade surplus with the United States and is investigating Vietnam for currency manipulation. It also recently suspended duty-free access for some $800 million in Thai imports because Thailand has not opened up enough to U.S. agriculture, and seemed to threaten tough trade action against Indonesia earlier this year if it bought weapons from Russia and China. (Indonesia caved and did not follow through with the purchases.)

While some of these trade-related complaints may have merit, the Biden administration will probably want to ease the pressure on Southeast Asia when it comes to trade policy. It will likely go easier on Vietnam and Indonesia, both of which are important security partners for the U.S., and on Thailand, a treaty ally. After all, to court Southeast Asian states that are caught between the United States and China, it makes little sense to also tighten the trade screws on these very same countries.

Southeast Asian leaders can expect a more conventional and engaged approach to the region from the incoming Biden administration.

Beyond its dealings with individual countries, Biden’s overall approach to trade and investment in the region might be constrained by domestic politics. Trump won election in 2016 while railing against giant multilateral trade deals like the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which he withdrew from as soon as he took office. Subsequently, he focused primarily on bilateral trade agreements, even as East Asian countries forged ahead with major regional deals like the reconstituted TPP, now known as the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership, and the recently signed Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership.

It will be difficult for Biden to reengage with Asia’s regional trade integration efforts in a meaningful way. Major segments of the U.S. population are skeptical of new trade deals, perhaps even more than in 2016, when even Hillary Clinton, Trump’s Democratic opponent in that year’s election, disavowed the TPP, a deal she had once praised. Moreover, Biden will likely enter office with Republicans in control of the Senate—unless the Democrats somehow manage to sweep both Senate seats in Georgia that will be decided in runoffs in January. Even with a slim Democratic majority in the Senate, though, Biden will have little political capital to expend on trade.

We can also expect a renewed U.S. focus on nontraditional security issues under Biden, which are important in Southeast Asia. While the Trump administration has mostly eschewed multilateral cooperation on COVID-19, Biden has pledged to work more closely with other countries on strategies to contain the pandemic. Since some countries in Southeast Asia, like Thailand and Vietnam, have had the most successful responses to COVID-19, the new administration could seek out their guidance. More broadly, Biden has tasked his new administration with broadening the definition of national security to include not only public health, but also climate change and other issues. That shift will be welcomed in Southeast Asia, one of the regions of the world most endangered by rising sea levels.

In tackling these challenges, simply picking up the phone or dispatching low-level envoys won’t be enough. Southeast Asian leaders value face time from their counterparts. Biden’s old boss, former President Barack Obama, made it a priority to regularly attend Southeast Asia’s most high-profile summits, barring a few instances when pressing domestic crises prevented him from traveling. Trump at first continued this policy, making a long trip to East Asia during his first year in office to attend key regional gatherings, but U.S. delegations to subsequent meetings were headed by lower-level officials, offending some Southeast Asian leaders. Biden will probably show up in the region more often, and he already has named several officials with Asia experience to top posts in the new administration.

Trump also left key national security posts unfilled across the State Department and the Pentagon. The Biden administration will likely take a more professionalized approach and move to fill many of those positions, including a deeper bench of senior and mid-level officials who deal with issues related to Southeast Asia.

When it comes to human rights issues and democracy promotion in Southeast Asia, Trump has shown only modest interest, consistent with his overall foreign policy approach. In fairness, the Trump White House has taken a tougher approach to Myanmar and Cambodia. But Trump has praised Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s brutal war on drugs and built closer ties with Thailand, despite a highly questionable election in 2019 and the government’s repression of pro-democracy protests. The Trump administration also invited Indonesian Defense Minister Prabowo Subianto for a visit to Washington, despite longstanding allegations of atrocities committed by troops under Prabowo’s command when he led Indonesia’s notorious special forces.

Southeast Asian countries would do well to temper their expectations. After all, Biden’s focus when he first takes office will be on containing the pandemic and boosting the struggling U.S. economy, all while trying to navigate Washington’s partisan gridlock. But overall, they can expect a more conventional and engaged approach to the region, in an effort to soothe tensions at a time when Biden will have many fires to put out at home and elsewhere in the world.

Joshua Kurlantzick is senior fellow for Southeast Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations.

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