The United States Trade Representative (USTR) recently announced it would begin formal trade negotiations with Taiwan. The negotiating mandate lays out 11 different areas for negotiation, ranging from trade facilitation to labor and the environment. Middlebury College professor Dr. Gary Winslett had a comprehensive Twitter thread in response to the substance of the announcement, most of which I agree with. Like the Biden administration’s Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF), market access (i.e., tariff elimination/​reduction) is notably absent from the Taiwan announcement, which is regrettable. For myriad reasons, the United States needs a bold and affirmative Asia-Pacific trade and investment agenda. Neither IPEF nor the Taiwan negotiations are up to the task.

For both economic and geopolitical reasons, it is increasingly clear the United States needs to flex its international economic leadership muscles in the Asia-Pacific region. As it stands now, the United States has just two free trade agreements (FTAs) with Asian countries – South Korea and Singapore, respectively. As the Carnegie Endowment’s Evan Feigenbaum has noted, the U.S. overemphasizes its security role in Asia and continues to underemphasize its economic role. Unlike Europe, which is more and more sclerotic, Asia is dynamic and rapidly changing. Tearing down trade and investment barriers and setting high quality standards in the region should be top of the United States’ international economic agenda.

Two policies came to dominate the Trump administration’s Asia-Pacific economic agenda. First, one of the Trump administration’s first official actions was to withdraw the United States from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a high quality, ambitious trade agreement with 11 other Pacific Rim nations. Cato released a comprehensive, chapter-by-chapter analysis of TPP and found that, on net, the agreement would liberalize trade and was worthy of support from free traders despite some baked in protectionism. The Trump administration’s ill-advised decision to jettison the promising agreement was a loss of prestige and a blow to U.S. soft influence. Indeed, aside from the Iraq war, this was probably the biggest foreign policy mistake the United States has made since the end of the Cold War. The remaining TPP members moved forward with the agreement without the United States and renamed it the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP). Now the United States is on the outside looking in.

Second, the Trump administration waged a reckless trade war with Beijing and let other economic opportunities in region wither on the vine. Countries in the region moved forward with various trade and investment agreements while the United States, once the world leader in trade liberalization, sat idly by.

As mentioned, CPTPP is now in effect and Beijing, Taipei and Seoul, among others, have applied to join CPTPP. Likewise, China’s answer to CPTPP, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership which cut a number of tariffs and established some regulatory harmonization, is also now in effect. In other words, the United States forfeited its seat at the table for shaping the terms of economic integration and standard setting in Asia. Others—most notably China—filled the void. Indeed, the Biden administration seems aware that U.S. sanctions are harming American firms and ceding ground in critical standard setting organizations. Sadly, fearing electoral backlash from being tarred as dreaded “globalists,” the response from policymakers in the Biden administration is far too tepid to meet the moment.

In the past, Cato scholars have endorsed a standalone bilateral free trade agreement (FTA) with Taiwan. Taiwan is a critical supplier of semiconductors and a fairly large trading partner with the United States especially given its size. Both sides would benefit from enhanced trade and investment liberalization. The most obvious impediment to enhanced U.S.-Taiwan trade ties has been Taiwan’s unwillingness to admit certain pork and beef products from the United States. Taiwan has subsequently partially lifted this ban and the two sides appear ready to begin talking. Yet the two sides should not settle for a feeble agreement. There is a better way for both Washington and Taipei.

Instead of negotiating half-hearted agreements—with no market access and almost certainly no strong dispute settlement mechanism—with IPEF countries and Taiwan, the smartest and easiest way to reestablish the United States’ leadership on international economics in the region is to simply rejoin CPTPP. Changes can be made quickly as the remaining CPTPP members are eager to enhance their economic integration with the United States. Once the United States has rejoined CPTPP, it should urge all parties to expedite Taiwan’s accession to the agreement.

Economically, American consumers—both individuals and firms—would benefit from tariff reductions in the United States and American exporters would see increased market access for their goods and services in the reconstituted trade bloc. Likewise, by working through the existing CPTPP framework, the United States can exercise significantly more influence in setting the standards that will govern commerce in the region—from digital trade to state-owned enterprises and industrial subsidies—in the 21^st century than it will on the outside of Asia’s major trade blocs.

Perhaps more important than the economic benefits of CPTPP membership is the issue of geopolitics, particularly China’s growing clout and assertiveness in the region. As my Cato colleague Scott Lincicome recently noted, TPP was designed to counter China’s influence over economics in Asia three ways. First, TPP offered an alternative market to China’s. This could help “reorient Asia-Pacific supply chains away from China and toward the U.S.” Likewise, TPP offered a forum for cooperation, consultation, negotiation and if necessary, settling disputes that arise under the agreement, more nimble than the World Trade Organization’s dispute settlement system. Finally, given that TPP was designed as a living agreement and a platform for new members to join, the United States could use its position within the structure to support the membership bids of close allies like South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, and the United Kingdom.

As mentioned, China, too, has applied to join the CPTPP. The United States would have the ability to block China’s accession to the CPTPP if it were a member of CPTPP. Alternatively, if a bit fanciful right now, the United States could leverage potential membership in CPTPP as a way to induce Beijing to make a number of changes to its international trade and investment practices, which the tariffs have failed to accomplish. China would need to make a number of serious concessions with credible assurances and enhanced dispute settlement procedures would need to be put in place if Beijing were to join.

The carrot of CPTPP membership would not be a cure-all for everything that ills the U.S.-China relationship or China’s struggling, state-led economy, but it is surely a better approach than self-defeating tariffs, empty international agreements, hawkish chest thumping and photo-ops for members of Congress.

To its credit, the Biden administration, unlike the Trump administration, seems aware that it needs an affirmative international economic agenda in the Asia-Pacific. But simply recognizing the problem while engaging in small ball negotiations is simply no match for an ambitious Asia-Pacific economic agenda like CPTPP membership. Trade can be an engine of growth, put downward pressure on prices in the United States, and bolster U.S. credibility and influence in an increasingly vital region of the world – if policymakers will allow it to.