Trade linkages and supply chains of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) and vaccines in ASEAN during the COVID-19 pandemic

The purpose of this paper is precisely to check whether the region played a significant role in the supply of PPE and vaccines during 2020, the first full year of the pandemic for which data is available. Our concept of the region is two-fold. First, we will focus on ASEAN to verify to what extent it could satisfy its needs of medical products and vaccines. ASEAN is then compared with the wider Asian region. ASEAN has signed with China, Japan and South Korea a set of trade and political agreements which establishes privileged relationships. These three partner countries have expertise and capabilities in the production of medical goods. However, among the three, China plays a specific role. It is the second-largest economy in the world and the largest global producer of some critical medical goods. It has signed with ASEAN a free trade agreement in 2002, which progressively eliminated tariffs on goods between the two parties. Their connectivity has also improved. The paper's ambition is a modest contribution to the role of regions in the COVID-19 pandemic that we have more comprehensively analysed in another paper on the policy response of ASEAN and the EU (Jetin, 2021). Here, the objectives are the following: in the next section, we want to check if Asia , as a broad region, is the leading provider of medical goods to ASEAN. We also look at the specific contribution of China, the rest of Asia, and ASEAN in the supply of medical goods to ASEAN. In the latter case, we want to assess the capacity of ASEAN to be self-sufficient. Finally, we look at the rest of the world, primarily the European Union (EU) and the USA, to see in which case they provide medical goods.