Peter Drysdale — A Struggle Between Two Conceptions of the World

In this episode of the Asia Pacific Business Forum Podcast, we speak with Peter Drysdale, Emeritus Professor of Economics at The Australian National University, a leading authority on Asia-Pacific economic integration, and an intellectual architect of APEC, the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation organization whose leaders met in South Korea three days after our conversation.   Peter discusses the increasing tension between President Trump’s “coercive power” bilateral approach and the rules-based, multilateral system of “cooperative regionalism,” which has been a key to the remarkable economic successes of Asian economies—what he describes as a growing “struggle between two conceptions of the world.”   In response to American pressures, leaders of RCEP—the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, comprising the ASEAN nations plus Australia, China, Japan, Korea, and New Zealand—who met in Kuala Lumpur on the day prior to our conversation, vowed to accelerate their commitments for greater economic integration, seeking to “de-risk” their economies from the United States. As Peter notes, this will accelerate the integration of RCEP member economies with China.