The Indo-Pacific Trade Deal aims to create alternative supply chains to China in the region.
Signatories included Singapore, South Korea, Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, Australia, Brunei, Fiji, India, Indonesia, Japan, New Zealand, and the Philippines.
A leading educational society dedicated to promoting mutual understanding and strengthening partnerships among people and leaders stated that the deal’s supply chain element, which has received the most attention, can provide supply chains with “a clean slate.”
According to the Society, “Strengthening regional supply chain resiliency,” the agreement might “open the door for innovative thinking on rules and cooperation mechanisms to minimise disruptions.”
According to the publication, “IPEF negotiators are making significant progress on their supply chain work, with early harvest agreements.”
It offered many suggestions to improve the IPEF agreement and extend its reach into other fields. According to the authors, actions taken to improve the deal in a key area, like minerals, might serve as a model for cooperation in other industries.
Making an “early warning system” and “crisis response mechanism” to warn of potential supply chain disruptions might be among the major components of this strengthening.
“IPEF members must develop a system in which countries closely monitor what is happening in the supply chain, share information in real-time, and identify potential disruptions as soon as possible,” the paper stated.
The current semiconductor shortages during the pandemic may have been mitigated with greater information exchange across the nations, and between the public and private sectors, it was highlighted.
It noted that countries may require new domestic legislation or regulations to deal with information sharing by the private sector.
As a result, IPEF should create a new set of regulations governing the types of business information that nations may obtain from the private sector, how nations may exchange such information, and how countries may ensure the privacy of sensitive business information.
Implementing tools like supply chain mapping, monitoring, and information sharing might enable IPEF signatories to respond to supply chain disruptions collectively with an effective crisis response framework.
The member countries would then “have a much better understanding of where they could fill the gap in their choke points and where they could turn for help in a crisis,” according to the report.
