Expansion And Contraction: The Institutional Hegemony Logic Of The Evolution Of The US Asia-Pacific Free Trade Area Strateg

Since the Cold War ended,the Free Trade Agreement(FTA)strategy has played an important role in maintaining U.S.hegemony in the Asia-Pacific region.However,in recent years,the United States has gradually reduced its use of FTA’s policy tools and turned to a more flexible system.In the context of great power competition,It is of realistic significance for China to study the US regional institution tactics and its logic in order to coping with the strategic pressure from the United States.Institutional hegemony is a phenomena when a hegemonic country acquires and maintains hegemony through institutional means.The American strategy of Free Trade Argeement in Asia-Pacific region(FTAAP),as a manifestation and practical approach of American regional institutional hegemony,has both public product attributes and private tool attributes.The logic of its strategic decision-making is mainly based on two principles: hegemony protection and realistic utilitarianism.The principle of maintaining hegemony determines the multiple strategic goals about the American FTAAP.These strategic goals include obtaining economic benefits,balancing regional power,strengthening security alliances,and dominating regional rules.The principle of realistic utilitarianism is the basic logic that affects the U.S.to choose the institutional tactics.Under the guidance of the principle of realistic utilitarianism,the United States often chooses appropriate FTA strategy based on the role of institutions in its hegemony.That is,when the FTA promotes American hegemony,the United States would adopt expansion strategy,while the FTA may undermine its hegemony,the United States would adopt the shrinking strategy.Since the Cold War ended,the Amecian FTAAP strategy has expericed two stage.The first stage is the strategic expansion from 1991 to 2016.During this period,the Asia-Pacific region was under a relatively steady state of American unipolar hegemony.Therefore,the United States actively implemented FTA strategies in the Asia-Pacific region,which has expanded the FTAs’ quantity and scale as well as breadth and depth on rule-making.Thoese action includes aspiringly participating in APEC and scrambling for APEC leadership,accelerating its FTAAP strategy to support U.S.security strategies and leading the construction of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement(TPP)to check China.From 2017 up to now is the second new stage of FTA’s contraction.Due to the decline of its strength,the U.S.government gave more preference for economic gains and America absolute insterests.Therefore,the United States withdrew from the TPP,revised the bilateral FTA relationships between the United States and Asia-Pacific alliances(manly with Japan and the South Korea),tended to release the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework(IPEF)and sign limited trade agreements so as to lower the costs of institution construction and maintenance,and improve the FTA’s fuction for race to win China.To study American FTAAP strategy,it is necessary to evaluate its effect.The success rate of FTA implementation,rule dominance,and achievement of major strategic goals are the three main dimensions for evaluating U.S.FTAAP strategy.The perfomance and influence of the U.S.FTAAP strategy should distinguish with institutional benefits on short term and strategic benefits on long term.On the one hand,the institutional benefits on short term obtained by the United States through FTA strategy should consider three factors: rule dominance,leadership legitimacy,and side payments.Only when the United States consider these three factors can it achieve higher institutional benefits through its FTAAP strategy.On the other hand,to judge whether the United States has achieved regional institutional hegemony through its FTA strategy,it mainly depends on whether it has achieved its main strategic goals,for those strategic gains on long term serve the U.S.hegemonic goals.Overall,the U.S.FTAAP strategy has been effective and fruitful in helping the U.S.increase economic interests,strengthen security alliances,and gain dominance power in rules,but it has only done not work well in balancing regional power.Throughout the strategic evolution of the U.S.FTAAP strategy,although what institution ways it adopts,the institutional hegemony logic behind its strategy has not changed.In recent years,though the United States has shown contraction strategy trend on FTAAP.Meantime,the United States has continuously fighted for the dominance of Asia-Pacific rules and more and more employed trade rules to regulate and contain China.As international geopolitical and economic environment has changed,competition among major countries has shifted from traditional trade to emerging areas such as digital trade and strategic high-tech industry.Under the logic of institutional hegemony,the United States would tend to comprehensively use trade,technology,and financial means to stifle and squash its competitors.Considering the U.S.’s competetion with China,its FTAAP strategy will continue the contraction strategy in the future,but will develop towards a portfolio strategy from deversifed institutions.