Indo-Pacific Framework to Offer Partial Membership, Lawyer Says

As the U.S. and several Pacific Rim allies move forward on the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, countries will have the ability to sign onto portions of any agreement rather than being required to join it wholesale, said Timothy Brightbill, a lawyer with Wiley, during a webinar put on by the law firm Jan. 25.

The framework will comprise a set of “modules” covering trade, the supply chain, infrastructure, clean energy and environment, digital economy, labor and agriculture, with negotiations hoped to begin in early 2022 following an Asia trip to build interest that included stops in Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea and Japan (see 2111170055).

“Countries will apparently have the ability to pick and choose which modules they want to join,” Brightbill said. “So, for example, they could participate in the trade module and the supply chain module, but not on the agriculture module. That being said, if a country decides to join the module, it has to commit to everything that would be a part of that module. That’s our understanding as to how that will work.”

Brightbill noted that the administration has emphasized that “this is not a free trade agreement, and that the administration has no interest in resurrecting the Trans-Pacific Partnership or joining its successor, the CPTPP [or Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership].”

Meanwhile, with the World Trade Organization’s Appellate Body on hiatus since late 2019, the U.S. will likely require any negotiations to end the stand-off, which prevents the WTO’s binding dispute settlement system from functioning, to be tied to a broader reform effort. “The view is, I think, that the Appellate Body provides leverage for a broader overhaul of WTO negotiations,” Brightbill said.

While there haven’t been any broad, comprehensive negotiations for 25 years, “there are things that the United States would like to see done on many WTO agreements, such as the Antidumping Agreement and the agreement on Subsidies and Countervailing Measures, just to name a couple,” Brightbill said.

In a statement Jan. 21, EU Trade Commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis said he these negotiations should be on the front burner and resolved in the coming years. “On WTO reform, it is clear that we all agree on the need to start the work without further delay. This is critical for the credibility of the Organization. It is in particular crucial to have a functioning dispute settlement system,” he said.

WTO members should “agree on the political priority of launching an inclusive process of deliberation on WTO reform with the target of reaching agreed outcomes by” the WCO’s 13th Ministerial Conference, currently unscheduled but likely a few years away, “in particular to ensure a fully functioning dispute settlement system,” Dombrovskis said.