Australia, India, Japan plan supply chain resilience circumventing China
The three countries will launch a new initiative to achieve supply chain resilience in the region
By IAR Desk
New Delhi: September 1, 2020. The trade ministers of Australia, India and Japan today agreed to cooperate and collaborate with each other to achieve supply chain resilience in the Indo-Pacific region. The obvious raisen d’etre is to counter Chinese hegemony in the region and dominance of trade.
In a trilateral ministerial virtual meeting in which the Australian Minister for Trade, Tourism and Investment, Simon Birmingham, India’s Minister of Commerce and Industry, Piyush Goyal, and Japan’s Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry, Kajiyama Hiroshi participated, all three “reaffirmed their determination to take a lead in delivering a free, fair, inclusive, non-discriminatory, transparent, predictable and stable trade and investment environment and in keeping their markets open,” a joint statement released at the end of the meeting said.
According to the statement in order to increase regional cooperation and enhance supply chain resilience the three sides would work to “launch of a new initiative to achieve the objective through cooperation. They instructed their officials to promptly work out the details of the new initiative for its launch later this year.”
The Ministers also called for other countries in the region, which share the afore-mentioned views, to participate in the initiative.
Australia, India and Japan, together with the USA form the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, or the QUAD, which is loose strategic grouping. The QUAD has engaged in consultations and military exercises.
In the wake of the India China border violence in June this year India took a number of measures to decrease trade and economic dependency on China.
The trilateral ministerial meeting was held in the backdrop of renewed escalation of border tensions between India and China in India’s Eastern Ladakh region.
