Word: asianness
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...That can be seen clearly in the continuing stream of agreements tying together regional powers. In August, India inked two FTAs in a week, with South Korea and the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). ASEAN and China are scheduled to bring most of the final tariff reductions of an FTA signed in 2004 into full effect by 2010. More deals are likely. Taiwan President Ma Ying-jeou has made his policy priority reaching a comprehensive economic framework with China that would reduce tariffs on Taiwan goods entering the Chinese market. Yukio Hatoyama, Japan's presumptive Prime Minister...
...drive to lower trade barriers has taken on fresh urgency amid the recession. Fears of an extended slump in spending by U.S. consumers have prompted policymakers to look to China, India and other neighbors as customers for exports. As Asian manufacturing networks become more intertwined - and as Asian consumers become wealthier - regional commerce is becoming critical to future economic expansion. Intraregional trade last year made up 57% of total Asia trade, up from 37% in 1980. "In the past Asia produced for America and Europe," Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo said recently. "Now, Asia is producing for Asia." (Read "Signs...
...course, Asia is still dependent on sales to the West. But FTAs could reduce the region's exposure to the U.S. by giving Asian companies preferential treatment in selling to Asian companies and consumers. These benefits could come with downsides, however. Companies in countries left out of the trade pacts - for example, the U.S. - could face disadvantages when trying to tap fast-growing Asian markets. This, in turn, could have a negative impact on efforts to rebalance excessive debt in the U.S. and excessive savings in Asia. FTAs "create a nonlevel playing field with advantages for Asian countries," says Eswar...
...everyone is worried. Richard Baldwin, professor of international economics at the Graduate Institute in Geneva, says tariffs in Asia have already come down so significantly that the additional benefits of FTAs don't give Asian firms that much of an edge over foreign rivals. Some analysts also believe political and economic rivalries place high hurdles in the path of a true Asia trade bloc. "The notion that there is going to be a Fortress Asia is really not correct," says Vinod Aggarwal, director of the Berkeley APEC Study Center at the University of California, Berkeley...
...market economics represents a universal and ideal economic order." "The influence of the U.S. is declining," Hatoyama wrote, in a "new era of multipolarity." While saying that the "Japan-US security pact will continue to be the cornerstone of Japanese diplomatic policy" (of course!) he insisted that "the East Asian region.... must be recognized as Japan's basic sphere of being." Hatoyama, went so far as to call for the development of something like a European Union - with a single currency, no less - in East Asia...