ABSTRACT
The United States has long defined itself as a Pacific power with a strong set of economic and security ties to Asia. The US has played a major role in the region’s evolution in its role as security guarantor of allies, champion of freedom of navigation and rule of law, and founder of Bretton Woods institutions (World Trade Organization, International Monetary Fund, World Bank) that enabled Asia’s outward economic growth model. Traditionally, the United States has frowned upon Asian-only regional integration initiatives, worried that they would result in ‘lines drawn across the Pacific’ and diminish the US presence. The rise of China – with its growing economic pull regionally and globally – and the deterioration of bilateral relations with the onset of strategic competition have intensified US concerns with marginalisation from the Asian economic architecture. The chapter will touch on the evolution of US trade policy in the region (the TPP interlude and post-TPP developments), will zoom on the expected impact of RCEP for members and non-members (in terms of gains from trade and rule setting), and will discuss possible pathways for the United States to recoup lost ground.
