It’s tough being a global trading power tussling for geoeconomic pre-eminence when you can’t sign binding trade deals, but that’s more or less where the Biden White House finds itself. A decade ago, when the Obama administration was driving forward the Trans-Pacific Partnership regional mega-deal, you’d have been laughed out of Washington for predicting that, the US having abandoned the agreement, Beijing would apply to join a pact originally designed to counter China’s economic heft. But the toxicity of formal trade agreements on Capitol Hill, which predates President Joe Biden and even Donald Trump, and among Biden’s voter base has in effect shut off one of the US’s main vehicles for projecting economic influence.Searching for an Asia-Pacific alternative to what is now the CPTPP (prefixed with “Comprehensive and Progressive”), the US last year announced the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, a series of deals with 13 other nations.
當(dāng)你不能簽署有約束力的貿(mào)易協(xié)定時(shí)，作為一個(gè)爭(zhēng)奪地緣經(jīng)濟(jì)優(yōu)勢(shì)的全球貿(mào)易大國(guó)是很煎熬的，但這或多或少正是拜登(Biden)領(lǐng)導(dǎo)的白宮現(xiàn)在的處境。十年前，當(dāng)奧巴馬(Obama)政府推進(jìn)區(qū)域大型《跨太平洋伙伴關(guān)系協(xié)定》(TPP)時(shí)，如果你預(yù)測(cè)美國(guó)會(huì)退出該協(xié)定，而中國(guó)將申請(qǐng)加入這項(xiàng)最初旨在對(duì)抗其經(jīng)濟(jì)實(shí)力的協(xié)定，你肯定會(huì)遭到華盛頓嘲笑。但正式貿(mào)易協(xié)定在美國(guó)國(guó)會(huì)極不受歡迎——這早于現(xiàn)任總統(tǒng)喬?拜登(Joe Biden)，甚至早于唐納德?特朗普(Donald Trump)執(zhí)政時(shí)期——也在拜登的選民基礎(chǔ)中不受歡迎，這實(shí)際上關(guān)閉了美國(guó)投射經(jīng)濟(jì)影響力的主要工具之一。