The Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity: Promise or Peril for Labor Governance through Trade Instruments?

Desirée LeClercq

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The Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity: Promise or Peril for Labor Governance through Trade Instruments?

In: Chinese (Taiwan) Yearbook of International Law and Affairs, Volume 40, 2022

Author:

Desirée LeClercq

Desirée LeClercq
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Type:: Chapter

Pages:: 134–154

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004687639_007

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Abstract

President Biden has launched the Indo-Pacific Framework for Prosperity (IPEF) that purports to facilitate high standards, including high labor standards, in the region. That Framework is silent on traditional trade matters such as market access, leading many trade and labor scholars and policymakers to question its utility. Contrary to that skepticism, this commissioned report argues that the IPEF holds tremendous promise by realigning the bottom-up governance of labor rights in trade with international labor governance. Doing so, this report argues, will strengthen allyships and trade relations in the region. However, the IPEF could prove equally perilous if all actors fail to seize its opportunities. The first part of this report describes the IPEF with brief mention of parallel trade and labor initiatives in Taiwan. It then describes how the labor standards regulated through trade arrangements have drawn from the same labor standards that are negotiated by governments, workers, and employers on the international platform. That tripartite process, it posits, enables dissimilar countries, irrespective of their level of economic development, cultural values, or political ideologies, to subscribe to a universal floor of standards. The third part of this report juxtaposes prior labor governance through US trade agreements against that international tripartite process. It argues that such labor governance, counterintuitively, risks weakening labor rights in counterpart countries. This report concludes by arguing that the IPEF presents the Biden administration and the IPEF members with a unique opportunity to correct prior governance disharmony. It urges the US administration to afford its IPEF partners the same autonomy to select and apply labor standards, based on their national consultations, as states are afforded on the international platform. At the same time, it urges the IPEF partners to take their rights commitments seriously lest they entice the US administration to revert to old, prescriptive ways.

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Chinese (Taiwan) Yearbook of International Law and Affairs, Volume 40, 2022

Series: Chinese (Taiwan) Yearbook of International Law and Affairs, Volume: 40

E-Book ISBN:: 9789004687639

Publisher:: Brill | Nijhoff

Print Publication Date:: 24 Nov 2023

Subjects
- International Law
  - International Law: General Interest
  - International Law: Regional Perspectives
- International Relations
  - International Relations

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The Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity: Promise or Peril for Labor Governance through Trade Instruments?

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Chinese (Taiwan) Yearbook of International Law and Affairs, Volume 40, 2022

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