President Joe Biden is nurturing economic ties this week with Asia, but he’s not signing any trade deals at a regional summit in San Francisco.
Read More: Biden Calls Xi a ‘Dictator’ Right After Praising Progress in Repairing U.S.-China Relationship
This fact — no trade deals — reveals a lot about the status of U.S. politics, the evolving global economy and the Biden administration’s own ambitions. U.S. negotiators say they’re progressing on finalizing agreements with 13 other countries on parts of the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework. The operative word is “framework” as that label allows Biden to bypass Congress in reaching agreements in IPEF (pronounced EYE-pef).
“It’s a framework because the administration wanted to have something it could do by executive agreement,” said Robert Holleyman, a former deputy U.S. trade representative.
Many U.S. voters have…
