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Joint U.S.-Korea Academic Studies 2012

Joint U.S. Korea Academic Studies
From the Issue
Joint U.S.-Korea Academic Studies 2012
About Joint U.S. Korea Academic Studies

For over twenty years, KEI has sponsored annual major academic symposiums at universities across the country and major academic conferences. Each year, papers are specially commissioned to fit panel topics of current policy relevance to the U.S.-ROK alliance and implications for the Korean peninsula. Following the symposium, KEI edits and publishes those papers in an annual volume entitled “Joint U.S.-Korea Academic Studies.”

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The U.S. Approach to Regional Trade Agreements Involving East Asia
Author: Edward J. Lincoln
Region: Asia
Theme: Economics
Location: United States of America
Published June 7, 2012
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The U.S. government has had a long and convoluted approach to the issue of bilateral or regional trade agreements involving East Asian countries. This paper focuses on three key aspects of this history: the intellectual battle between global and bilateral or regional approaches to trade agreements, the relationship of trade policy to U.S. security policy, and the rising importance of trade in services.

Fundamentally, American economic policy toward East Asia is rooted in the strategic involvement of the United States in the region, which leads to a preference for trans-Pacific trade agreements rather than the intra-Asian alternative. But the U.S. approach to regional trade issues was complicated over the years due to the strong belief among economists and government officials that the global approach to trade and investment issues is more efficient than a bilateral or regional approach. Nonetheless, the rising importance of international trade and investment in service industries has helped push the U.S. government away from its commitment to the global approach since the World Trade Organization has made relatively little progress yet on covering these issues. This chapter explores the evolution of American policy in the context of these factors.

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