The Impact Of Us Policy On Economic Integration In The Asia Pacific On The Threshold Of The Third Decade Of The 21st Century

The Trump administration’s economic policy has led to increased uncertainty, disruption to global value chains, decline in trade in the Asia-Pacific region. Amid the US withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, revising NAFTA, imposing tariffs, decoupling from the Chinese economy, Japan, China and other economies in the Asia Pacific are trying to develop new mechanisms to increase stability in the region and protect their production networks. One way to improve the situation is to conclude intra-regional and inter-regional free trade agreements, the number of which is increasing. At present, there are two competing mega-FTA projects of China and Japan – the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership and the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership. The United States is with moderate success developing its own format of a free and open Indo-Pacific, which is partly a counterbalance to the RCEP. The US also concludes bilateral agreements, such as first phases of trade deals with Japan and China. However, winning the negotiating table, the United States can seriously lose in competitiveness, as regional integration develops further and often without the participation of America.