US and EU Regionalism: The Case of the Western Pacific Rim

Abstract

Notes

¹By Western Pacific Rim, I mean East Asia plus Oceania. By East Asia, I mean Northeast Asia and Southeast Asia.

This research was funded, in part, by the Ahlers Center for International Business at the University of San Diego

²For the history of these arrangements, see Woods (1993).

³For instance, Drysdale (1988); Krause and Sekiguchi (1981). The primary focus was on the increased resort of the US government to unilateralism in its efforts to cope with surging East Asian exports.

⁴On the EVSL failure see Krauss (2004), Ravenhill (2001), and Wesley (2001).

⁵But contrast Wall (2001) who suggests that Japan's exports may have been as much as 19 percent lower than they would otherwise have been because of the negative effects of NAFTA and the EU.

⁶ Yoshimatsu (2005) provides further details of the role of Keidanren.

⁷For further discussion, see Ravenhill (2001).

⁸The results of a study conducted by government think tanks on the future of Japan-Korea economic relations were published in May 2000. Munakata (2001), a former Director of Policy Planning in MITI, provides a detailed discussion of the developments that led to Tokyo's decision to pursue bilateral trade agreements.

⁹In contrast, the proposals for agreements with Korea and Mexico, even though launched a year earlier, moved forward much more slowly. The agreement with Mexico was eventually finalized in 2004. On the negotiations with Mexico see Solis (2003).

¹⁰The typical practice in PTAs involving Western Pacific countries is for the proposed agreement first to be subject to scrutiny by a study group involving officials and sometimes private sector representatives from both parties. Following the reports by the study groups, official negotiations begin.

¹¹For estimates of the likely welfare gains and losses from many of the proposed arrangements in the Western Pacific see Scollay and Gilbert (2001).

¹²For further discussion of Singapore's foreign economic policies see Dent (2001) and Low (2003). Thailand has begun to emulate Singapore's strategy, again attempting to position itself as a regional hub for certain industries, most notably automobile manufacturing.

¹³See Desker (2004).

¹⁴See, for instance, People's Daily “FTA with Taiwan means political trouble: official”, (21 June 2002) http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/200206/21/eng20020621_98285.shtml, accessed November 10, 2003

¹⁵For further discussion of the political economy of the agreements, see Ravenhill (2006).

¹⁶I follow Aggarwal and Fogarty (2004) in distinguishing inter-regionalism—formal links between two free trade areas or customs unions/common markets—from trans-regionalism, a free trade agreement between countries located in different geographical areas (e.g., North America and Asia).

¹⁷This figure includes South Asia. Commission of the European Communities (2001).

¹⁸For additional material on ASEM see Jung and Lehmann (1997), Lee Tsao Yuan (1997), Segal (1997), Higgott (1998), Maull, Segal, and Wanandi (1998), Gilson (1999), Richards and Kirkpatrick (1999), Stokhof and Velde (1999), Higgott (2000), Lee (2000), Rosamond (2000), Yeo Lay Hwee (2000), and the links on the ASEM Research Platform website, hosted by the International Institute for Asian Studies in the Netherlands: http://www.iias.nl/asem/, accessed January 8, 2005.

¹⁹Meetings of ASEM finance ministers in July 2004 and of economic ministers in September 2004 were cancelled because ASEAN refused to agree to the participation in ASEM of the ten new members of the EU unless the EU accepted ASEAN's three most recent members into ASEM. A compromise under which the participation of Myanmar was agreed provided representation was not at the Head of State/Government level was eventually negotiated, permitting the fifth ASEM summit to proceed as scheduled in Hanoi in October 2004.

²⁰For further discussion see Ravenhill (2004).

²¹ Garnaut (2002). In response, the Australian government commissioned a study by the Monash University economist, Richard Snape (1986), which concluded that Australia's trade interests would be best served through non-discriminatory liberalization. A summary of the study is published as Snape (1989).

²²In the late 1980s, there was discussion of potential free trade agreements with Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan as well as Australia. See Schott (1989).

²³The proposal led the Australian government to commission a second report (Snape, Adams, and Morgan [1993]) into Australian participation in preferential agreements, which reached the same conclusion as Snape's 1986 study.

²⁴When the US subsequently negotiated an FTA with Singapore, the US International Trade Commission (USITC) (2003) concluded that its impact on the United States would probably be “negligible to very small.”

²⁵On the problem of credibility of commitments by East Asian countries see Cowhey (1993).

²⁶The United States has Trade and Investment Framework Agreements with Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Thailand.

²⁷Maintenance of US barriers to exports from Singapore is somewhat ironic given that subsidiaries of US corporations are estimated to manufacture more than 60% of all Singapore's exports to the United States.

²⁸ Weiss, Thurbon, and Mathews (2004) and Capling (2005) provide excellent discussion of the details of the Australia-US agreement.

²⁹At its meeting of economic ministers in September 2004, for instance, ASEAN announced that it intended to begin negotiations for preferential trade agreements with China, Japan, India, Australia, and New Zealand.

Jung, K.-H. and J.-P. Lehmann (1997). Report on Asia-Europe Economic and Business Relations in the ASEM Framework. Submitted to the Third Plenary Session of the Council for Asia Europe Cooperation to be held in Tokyo in November 1997

Lee Tsao Yuan. 1997. APEC and ASEM in Comparative Perspective. APEC Rountable 1997: APEC—Sustaining the Momentum, Singapore

Parliament of the Commonwealth of Australia, The Senate. (2004). Select Committee on the Free Trade Agreement Between Australia and the United States of America: Interim Report. Canberra, Parliament of Australia

Teh Jr., R. R. 1999. Completing the CEPT Scheme for AFTA. Conference on “Beyond AFTA and Towards an ASEAN Common Market,” Manila

Wall, H. J. (2001). Has Japan Been Left Out in the Cold by Regional Integration? Tokyo, Bank of Japan, Discussion Paper No. 2001-E-15

Additional information

Notes on contributors

John Ravenhill

John Ravenhill is Professor in the Department of International Relations, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University.