Around the US-led Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF), it is becoming increasingly difficult to expect an agreement in the field. The United States** has ostensibly expressed its intention to continue negotiations, but the ruling Democratic Party, which has strengthened inward-looking policies, has strong opposition to it, considering domestic voters. The IPEF aims to build an economic order to counter China, but the dominant player, the United States, is becoming an obstacle and could frustrate the plan.
"It's over".
Biden has withdrawn the IPEF program," Senator Sherrod Brown of the ruling Democratic Party of the United States announced to union officials in Ohio in the Midwestern state of Ohio on January 3. "I've been fighting on behalf of workers in the states against the bad agreements that have been put in place," he stressed. That will never change."
Fourteen countries, including Japan, the United States, and Southeast Asia, have participated in the IPEF and have been advancing negotiations on four areas. As of November 2023, agreements have been reached in three areas: a "clean economy" that promotes decarbonization, a "fair economy" that prevents tax evasion, and "strengthening the ** chain", but the remaining "** smooth" agreements have been postponed.
The U.S. had hoped to reach an agreement on the area at the November meeting, but it was stalled by Brown and others calling for opposition ahead of the meeting. Brown and others explained that this was not a shelf, but a "withdrawal of negotiations". In the face of the United States**, he asserted: "The matter is over".
Brown is a key figure in Ohio, where the fate of the election is in control, and he has served seven terms in the House of Representatives and three terms in the Senate. The U.S. **former** said that in the Biden camp, which is seeking re-election in this fall, Brown is in a position to "guide the election tactics of swing states."
Democratic lawmakers in the United States have a psychological shadow of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), now known as the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) due to the withdrawal of the United States. In 2016, Donald Trump, a former Republican, won the Midwest workers' vote by pledging to withdraw from the TPP in his election platform.
Workers in the steel and auto industries gathered in the Midwest have a sense that the influx of cheap products from abroad has put American manufacturing in decline and robbed them of jobs. Former Trump saw the odds in this and raised the slogan of America first.
David Boleyn of the Eurasia Group, an American research firm, said: "There is almost zero chance that the United States will take serious action in the future to reach an agreement in the field of IPEF." Even if Biden is re-elected, it will be difficult to raise the atmosphere."