(Nearly) Everything on Asian Economic Integration

My memory has just been jogged by a recent LSE talk I attended concerning Asia's role in the world trading system featuring Ambassador Frank Lavin, formerly the Undersecretary for International Trade at the US Department of Commerce during the second Bush 43 term. There, he made the case that FTAs aren't really "trade diversion" as economists make them out to be, but can instead serve as building rather than a stumbling block to creating commerce. Given good reception of my own material concerning Southeast Asian economic integration, I figure it's worth another shot to put up related work. Above are presentation slides I prepared for a Masters-level course taught here at the LSE, International Politics: Asia and the Pacific. Although I have a wide range of interests as you can probably gather from this blog's content, I am supposed to be working on Southeast Asian economic integration. So, the slides above are very much in my line of work.

The slides are in three parts, which all pertain to ASEAN-centred economic integration processes in the Asia-Pacific. First, I discuss the ASEAN Economic Community, one of its three pillars of integration along with the Political-Security and Socio-Economic pillars. As with similar arrangements, it covers freedom of movement for goods, services, capital, and labour. Second, I enumerate the proliferation of FTAs in the region which ASEAN has signed after completing one with China. It seems the ASEAN-China FTA set off a regional competition to get in ASEAN's good graces to complete an FTA. Last, I discuss ASEAN+3 (ten member countries plus China, Japan, and South Korea) arrangements such as the Chiang Mai Initiative Multilateralization (CMIM) as well as the Asian Bond Market Initiative (ABMI)--both of which are designed to prevent another Asian financial crisis from happening.

Though I've seen it before, this is the first time I'm using Slideshare and I'm rather pleased with my (re)discovery. There are tonnes of other PowerPoint slides I've used for courses and conferences that can now be posted for IPE Zone reader edification! Please enjoy.