Word: traded
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Part of the problem, too, is the distance with which the U.S. held ASEAN in recent years. While China, India, Australia and other regional economies have been assiduously wooing Southeast Asia by signing free-trade agreements with the bloc, the U.S., particularly under the presidency of George W. Bush, kept ASEAN at arm's length. One reason was Burma's accession to ASEAN in 1997, which put the U.S. in a tough spot. Washington had been tightening sanctions on the Burmese junta because of its dismal human-rights record. By participating in ASEAN confabs, Bush's State Department worried that...
...dominance of local Chinese communities catalyzed bloody pogroms and discriminatory laws against the ethnic Chinese. Despite the occasional bursts of anti-Chinese violence, businesses in Thailand and Indonesia are still disproportionately controlled by overseas Chinese today. As a consequence, even as Beijing pleads that it's only interested in trade - not political influence - Southeast Asians are wary of their new big brother...
...rhetorical success has not yet been matched by resolution of the United States' foreign policy challenges, not only in Pakistan, Afghanistan and North Korea, but also among allies. Several Asian nations, most particularly South Korea, have waited anxiously for word that Obama intends to prioritize finalizing a new free trade agreement, something the White House has begun to signal this week. China, meanwhile, has expressed growing concern about the U.S. trade policy and the spiraling U.S. national debt, which endangers the value of China's vast investment in U.S. currency...
...there is little expectation of dramatic breakthroughs on any of those issues, there is consensus among Obama's advisers on the general approaches to follow. On most trade questions, the position of the Obama Administration remains the same as that of its predecessor: polite pressure. On some security issues, however, the U.S. has moved more in line with the preferences of its Asian allies, like reopening bilateral dialogue with North Korea and direct talks with Burma. There have been few disputes among Obama's team on the correct position on any of these issues. (See pictures of Obama's past...
...Bader is the one to brief him in the West Wing during the day, to coordinate the agencies in policy formation, and to stand by when Obama takes or makes calls to leaders. Bader spent 27 years in government as a career foreign-service officer focusing on China and trade. Bader came to the Administration from the Brookings Institution, where he had been hired by James Steinberg, now Deputy Secretary of State...