Theme Overview: U.S. Agricultural Trade and ASEAN

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) is an economic and political union comprising ten member countries: Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam. These countries have a combined total population of almost 700 million and a combined GDP of $3.2 trillion (Council on Foreign Relations, 2023). ASEAN has also played an important role in Asian economic integration—creating free trade agreements with Australia, New Zealand, China, India, Japan, South Korea, and Hong Kong—and is a member of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), which includes all the above countries except India. ASEAN countries also have their own individual free trade agreements beyond the Asian region. For instance, Vietnam and the Philippines have agreements with the United Kingdom and the EU, respectively, and four ASEAN countries (Brunei Darussalam, Malaysia, Singapore, and Vietnam) are members of the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for TransPacific Partnership (CPTPP). The United States does not have a have free trade agreements with any ASEAN countries other than Singapore (Cimino-Isaacs, 2023). These widespread agreements present challenges for U.S. agricultural exports as ASEAN countries deepen trade with competing countries.