TOKYO—President Joe Biden on Monday is expected to come out with a list of nations that will join the Indo-Pacific trade pact, but Taiwan won’t be among them.
White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan confirmed that Taiwan isn’t among the governments signed up for the launch of the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, a pact that’s meant to allow the United States to work more closely with key Asian economies on issues like supply chains, digital trade, clean energy, and anticorruption. The U.S. president is slated to highlight the launch of the framework as he meets Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida on Monday.
Inclusion of the self-ruled island of Taiwan, which the Chinese regime claims as its own, would have irked Beijing. The Chinese regime claims the island as its own, despite the fact that Taiwan is a de facto independent country, with its own military, democratically-elected government, and constitution.
“We are looking to deepen our economic partnership with Taiwan including on high technology issues, including on semiconductor supply,” Sullivan said. “But we’re pursuing that in the first instance on a bilateral basis.”
The framework is meant to establish Biden’s economic strategy for the region. Matthew Goodman, senior vice president for economics at Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, suggested that some Pacific signatories will be disappointed because the pact is not expected to include provisions for greater access to the U.S. market.
“I think a lot of partners are going to look at that list and say: That’s a good list of issues. I’m happy to be involved,” said Goodman, a former director for international economics on the National Security Council during President Barack Obama’s administration. “But, you know, are we going to get any tangible benefits out of participating in this framework?”
The Chinese communist regime, in anticipation of the launch of the pact, has criticized the U.S. effort.
Brian Deese, director of the White House National Economic Council, said the pact is focused on “issues that would matter most for American families,” like avoiding empty shelves in stores. “This framework will help us build more resilient early warnings for supply chains,” he told CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday. “We can solve those types of issues.”