Episode 20: Tariff Fallout Belies Asia's Geoeconomic Agenda

Описание: Our guest today is Dr. Denis Hew, who spent over a decade as the director of the research arm of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum (APEC) and also spent time before that in several other key economic institutions including the Asian Development Bank (ADB). We will start a conversation talking about the state of the regional economic architecture (https://www.aseanwonk.com/p/asean-agr...) . Be sure to tune in to the full episode where we go through a range of other subjects, including Indo-Pacific geoeconomics, growth trajectories and what the regional, minilateral and multilateral landscape will look like into 2026 (https://www.aseanwonk.com/p/southeast...) .


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REGIONAL GEOECONOMIC ARCHITECTURE


ASEAN Wonk: So welcome to the podcast, Denis, and let's get started. I wanted to kick off with where we are in terms of the regional economic architecture. This is an architecture which, as you know having been in several of these leading institutions, went through a series of waves. In the nineties, for example, we had APEC come to the fore and there was some excitement about institutional innovation. If we skip over a few decades to the present, there's a lot more conversation about minilaterals, sectoral deals and smaller groupings. But at the same time, we still have ASEAN coming up with digital initiatives that are regionwide. That's a multilateral institution. In APEC, there are still efforts to try to revive notions like the Free Trade Agreement of the Asia-Pacific. How do you assess the role of regional economic multilateralism within this geoeconomic environment we’re in? Is there perhaps a little bit too much doom on the multilateral economic architecture than is warranted?


Dr. Denis Hew: Well, thanks for having me. I'm a pessimist at heart, but I think I can maybe share a little bit of optimism about the economic and trade architecture. As you mentioned, in the last couple of decades, in Southeast Asia and East Asia, we've seen closer economic and trade integration among these regions. And much of that has also been driven by the the establishment of global supply chains, particularly in manufacturing, electronics, semiconductors. And, of course, within ASEAN, it's been forging closer economic integration. It's got this big project, the ASEAN Economic Community (ASEAN), which was established more than twenty years ago, and they're moving forward towards their next milestone post-2025.


But we know the world's changed quite a bit, partly because of rising U.S.-China tensions, and we're beginning to see that kind of fragmentation in the global economy. There's also a lot of disappointment at the multilateral trading system at the World Trade Organization. There haven’t been many key major deliverables. The dispute settlement mechanism is still pretty stuck and not resolved. And a lot of the economic trade agreements have been protracted in trying to reach any conclusions.





“[W]e're beginning to see that kind of fragmentation in the global economy.”





So in terms of the trend as you're moving forward, you see, as you mentioned, bilaterals and economic kinds of minilaterals. A good example is DEPA, the Digital Economy Partnership Agreement (DEPA). So you've got a couple of like-minded countries which want to move forward. If they are stuck at WTO with a quest for an e-commerce agreement, and we want to move forward in terms of the digital economy, digital trade, one of the ways is to come together and try to form a partnership agreement among themselves.


The other big trend, of course, is that we're we're seeing a proliferation of free trade agreements, both bilateral as well as regional. And, of course, within this region, the big ones are RCEP, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (RCEP), which includes ASEAN and its and its five major trading partners...