Deputy U.S. Trade Representative Sarah Bianchi will travel to Japan next week to hold talks on the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework with senior officials, her office said Thursday.
Bianchi's four-day trip to Tokyo from Monday, announced by the Office of the Trade Representative, comes as Washington steps up efforts to make progress on the U.S.-led trade initiative, commonly known as IPEF, before this year's summit of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum summit in November.
The senior trade official may discuss ways to strengthen supply chains for semiconductors and other key industrial products as Japan and the United States, together with like-minded countries, deepen cooperation over what they call "economic coercion" by China.
To coincide with the APEC summit in San Francisco, the United States plans to hold an IPEF meeting and hopes to strike a deal on the specifics of the trade framework, which excludes China. U.S. President Joe Biden launched the framework in 2022.
Ongoing negotiations for the IPEF concentrate on four pillars -- fair trade, supply chain resilience, clean energy with decarbonization and infrastructure, and proper taxation and anti-corruption.
The 14 members, which also include Australia, India, Indonesia, South Korea, Thailand and Vietnam, among others, account for about 40 percent of the global economy.
