Biden’s Missing Taiwan Strategy As he meets with Xi Jinping, the President lacks a credible trade agenda for the Pacific.
When President Biden sits down Monday with Xi Jinping ahead of the G-20 summit, he’ll face a confident and increasingly aggressive Chinese President. Who knows what Mr. Xi will conclude about the aging American president, but there’s no doubt he will probe U.S. resolve on Taiwan.
Mr. Xi comes to the meeting having been given a historic third term by the Chinese Communist Party. Meanwhile, the U.S. recently concluded what it called “productive” meetings with Taipei over trade-related issues. Mr. Xi opposes closer U.S. ties with the island democracy.
The decision to pursue these trade negotiations is welcome. But the context is that this was a sop to Taiwan for the Biden Administration’s decision to exclude it from the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework that the President announced in May. A bipartisan group of 52 senators and 200 House Members wrote separate letters urging Taiwan’s inclusion.
IPEF is a watered down version of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) that Barack Obama signed in 2016 but President Trump withdrew from in one of his worst strategic decisions. IPEF is intended to shore up allies in the region by creating a rules-based community based on shared objectives.
China isn’t included because it isn’t a good-faith player, and the hope is that IPEF helps shield our friends from China’s bullying. Australia suffered when China, angered by its call for an honest investigation into the origin of Covid, retaliated by restricting Australian exports such as wine, coal and lobster.
As Vice President, Mr. Biden defended TPP, which was the showcase of the Obama Administration’s “pivot to Asia.” But once he ran for the Democratic presidential nomination, Mr. Biden flipped for domestic political reasons. He calculated that the Bernie Sanders wing of his party was opposed to trade deals as much as Donald Trump was.
So it’s telling that IPEF conspicuously doesn’t offer the one thing all these Asian nations want: greater access to the U.S. market. Even the talks with Taiwan don’t promise that. What incentive do small countries have to risk angering China if they don’t at least get better access to the American market in return?
In March, U.S. trade representative Katherine Tai admitted to the Senate Finance Committee that tariff liberalization is not the Administration’s goal. Traditional free trade agreements, she said, “have led us to a place where we are facing a considerable backlash that we are listening to from our own people about concerns regarding the offshoring and outsourcing of American jobs and opportunities through these types of arrangements.”
That explains why even the bilateral negotiations with Taiwan won’t produce a full-fledged trade agreement—which would have to go through Congress. But this plays into China’s hands.
Much is at stake at Monday’s meeting with Mr. Xi. Mr. Biden can’t afford to show weakness on the U.S. commitment to Taiwan’s defense, which needs to be backed up immediately with U.S. and allied military assets. But Mr. Biden is harming his own policy, and U.S. interests, by lacking a credible economic strategy with Taiwan and the rest of the Asia-Pacific.
Comments are closed.
