Previously posted on SSRN.

Abstract

President Biden has launched an 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. On the other hand, the IPEF could prove equally perilous if all actors fail to seize its opportunities.

The first part of this report describes IPEF with a 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 U.S. trade agreements against that international tripartite process. It argues that such labor governance has, counterintuitively, risked 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 U.S. 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 U.S. administration to revert to old, prescriptive ways.

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