IPEF Makes Excluded China Angry
Is IPEF further evidence of decoupling? And what does that mean for shipping?
On Tuesday 27 July, the Indo Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity (IPEF) meets via video conference, co-hosted by US Trade Representative Katherine Tai and Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo.
IPEF was launched by President Biden In May 2022. It has 14 member nations but China is not one of them.
IPEF has made China very angry, not least because it says it is excluded from joining and sees IPEF as the US “selfishly using member countries as vassals” as the state mouthpiece The Global Times wrote on 26 July.
Michael Shoebridge, director of defence, strategy and national security at think-tank the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, says decoupling is real and growing. “China and US decoupling has now been joined by EU-China decoupling, and we’re facing a common strategic challenge of Russia and China that unifies European actors with Indo-Pacific actors”
Charles Freeman, ex-US diplomat, now senior fellow at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, says, “It’s very unfortunate because it basically produces conflict where there was cooperation. It disrupts trade. It menaces supply chains and so forth”
Decoupling is a key strategic risk for shipping. To find out more, check out our report, Five Tiers of Transition, which covers Decoupling along with Demographics, the Death of Monetarism, Decarbonisation and Digitalisation. Download it here.
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