Before Asia Trip, Pompeo Gets an Earful on Trade War From Business Lobby

WASHINGTON — Secretary of State Mike Pompeo pledged Monday to ramp up the Trump administration’s diplomatic engagement with Asia in a speech that followed a blistering attack on the president’s trade policies by a usually stalwart Republican business ally.

Thomas Donohue, the longtime U.S. Chamber of Commerce president and chief executive, introduced Pompeo at an Indo-Pacific business forum by criticizing protectionist trade measures that he said led to the Great Depression and World War II. He said U.S. commitment to free trade since then had kept the peace around the world.

“If our companies lose access to foreign markets, they will struggle to remain competitive in the global economy,” Donohue said, in a clear reference to President Donald Trump’s trade war and tariffs. “Today, foreign policy is domestic policy.”

Pompeo spoke before his travel to the region this week for a ministerial meeting in Singapore of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, as well as bilateral meetings in Indonesia and Malaysia. The trip comes as Asian nations are moving away from the United States.

Pompeo pledged that the Trump administration would soon provide $113 million to support energy, infrastructure and digital efforts in Asia. But the money represents a fraction of the billions of dollars the Obama administration had promised — and that the Trump administration canceled in its earliest days when it walked away from the Paris climate accord.

On infrastructure alone, the $30 million committed by Pompeo pales next to the tens of billions of dollars China is spending on such programs.

The funding disparity is emblematic of the administration’s inability to articulate a coherent strategic vision to counter China in the region in the wake of Trump’s decision to walk away from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade accord intended to offset Beijing’s growing economic hegemony. Since then, regional states have approved the trade partnership on their own, with Japan recently striking a trade agreement with the European Union.

“I know some are wondering about America’s role in light of President Donald Trump’s decision to pull out of TPP,” Pompeo said. “While we work with our partners to craft better and higher-standard bilateral trade agreements, our companies are continuing to advance U.S. economic interests by growing their presence in the region.”

He referred to the region as the Indo-Pacific instead of the Asia-Pacific — a name change that has sought to entice India into a regional “free and open” strategic partnership with the United States, Japan and Australia.

“When we say ‘free’ in the Indo-Pacific, it means we want all nations to be able to protect their sovereignty from coercion by other countries,” Pompeo said. “At the national level, ‘free’ means good governance and the assurance that citizens can enjoy their fundamental rights and liberties.”

Yet he largely ignored India and the promotion of democracy in his speech — a notable omission on both fronts.

For decades, a cornerstone of U.S. policy in Asia has been a concerted effort to improve ties with India — in part to thwart China, a strategy that former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson promised to accelerate in a speech and visit to New Delhi last year.

“The Trump administration is determined to dramatically deepen ways for the United States and India to further this partnership,” Tillerson said at the time.

Since then, relations with India have cooled markedly. A meeting last year between Trump and Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India was disastrous; leaked videos of Trump mocking Modi’s manner of speaking received wide attention in India, infuriating the country’s elite.

Trump’s tariffs have hit Indian manufacturers; his decision to walk away from the Iran nuclear deal and reimpose economic sanctions on countries that buy oil from Tehran could hit India particularly hard. Recent legislation in Congress to impose sanctions on nations that buy military equipment from Russia also threatens New Delhi, and the Trump administration has thrice canceled high-level talks with Indian officials.

Pompeo also has yet to go to India as secretary of state, although this will be his fourth trip to Asia in just over three months.

Michael Green, a top Asia adviser to President George W. Bush whose advocacy of the “Indo-Pacific” terminology was adopted last year by Tillerson, said the absences were telling.

“The framing of ‘Indo-Pacific’ is good, but it’s tripped up by everything that’s wrong with this administration’s foreign policy,” he said. “What does Trump actually stand for? And how do you do any of this without a regional trade policy?”