ASEAN Integration in 2030 : United States Perspectives
Abstract
The paper argues that United States (US) participation in the East Asia Summit (EAS)—regional integration architecture led by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)—was motivated by four changes in the regional economic landscape : (i) the Asian financial crisis of 1997 and emergence of the ASEAN+3 grouping; (ii) the rise of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) as the leading regional growth engine and an active player in regional integration arrangements; (iii) the failure of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) arrangement to foster trade liberalization in the region; and (iv) the inability of the World Trade Organization (WTO) Doha Development Round to lower global trade barriers significantly. In joining the EAS, the Obama Administration espoused an approach known as divided functionality, one that would give priority to APEC, and its trade-focused Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement economic engagement with East Asia, and the EAS for addressing political and security issues. Currently, two architectures for regional economic integration are contesting. The first embodies the US vision of a deeply institutionalized Asia-Pacific economic community, as articulated by the ongoing TPP trade negotiations. The second is represented by the Asia-only ASEAN+3 framework, a shallowly institutionalized grouping with weak enforcement compliance mechanisms. However, despite differences in the two approaches, prospects for a healthy complementarity between them—through overlapping memberships, the application of open regionalism, and the benefits of competitive liberalization among specific trade agreements—seem promising.Download Info
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.Bibliographic Info
Paper provided by East Asian Bureau of Economic Research in its series Finance Working Papers with number 23310.Length:
Date of creation: Jul 2012
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:eab:financ:23310
Contact details of provider:
Postal: JG Crawford Building #13, Asia Pacific School of Economics and Government, Australian National University, ACT 0200
Web page: http://www.eaber.org
More information through EDIRC
Related research
Keywords: ASEAN integration; the East Asia Submit; The United States; regional integration architecture; Asia-Pacific economic community;Find related papers by JEL classification:
- F13 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Trade Policy; International Trade Organizations
- F15 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Economic Integration
- F18 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Trade and Environment
- F55 - International Economics - - International Relations and International Political Economy - - - International Institutional Arrangements
- F59 - International Economics - - International Relations and International Political Economy - - - Other
This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:
- NEP-ALL-2012-08-23 (All new papers)
- NEP-SEA-2012-08-23 (South East Asia)
References
No references listed on IDEASYou can help add them by filling out this form.
Citations
Lists
This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.Statistics
Access and download statisticsCorrections
When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eab:financ:23310For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Shiro Armstrong).
If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.
If references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.
If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link to it, you can help with this form.
If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.
Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

