US envoy to Japan pushes for Nato-like trade bloc to tackle China’s economic coercion

Rahm Emanuel said the coalition needs the economic equivalent of Nato’s Article 5 for effectiveness

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US envoy to Japan Rahm Emanuel. Photo: Reuters

Published: 9:25am, 10 Oct 2024Updated: 3:38pm, 10 Oct 2024

The United States and its allies should form a coalition that can be a sort of Nato to counter China’s economic coercion with a unified stance, Washington’s envoy to Japan said in an opinion piece published on Wednesday.

US Ambassador to Japan Rahm Emanuel said in an article for The Wall Street Journal that the administration of President Joe Biden has succeeded in expanding multilateral security partnerships in the Indo-Pacific region and now is the time to consider adding new economic measures against China.

One idea could be such a trade-defence coalition, Emanuel said, and for that to be effective, he suggested it “would need the economic equivalent of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation’s Article 5 – an attack on one is an attack on all – at its core”.

Emanuel said countries such as Australia, which had to grapple with higher tariffs imposed by China after calling for an independent probe into the Covid-19 outbreak in 2020, have provided valuable lessons.

He suggested the importance of like-minded countries working even more closely, given that Australia curbed its economic reliance on China by expanding exports to other markets with the help of its network of allies and making it possible for Canberra to eventually force Beijing to back down.

He said the US “must now further integrate economic statecraft into its wider strategic latticework architecture”.