Trump's top economic advisor plans to rival China's BRI through Quad

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 13 November 2018, 21:48 GMT]
The Vice President of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) David Bohigian has revealed that US Vice President Mike Pence is set to present details of a joint ‘development’ financing scheme to rival Beijing's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), the South China Morning Post reported on Friday. In a recent interview to the Washington Post, he warned Beijing and urged to change its behaviour if it wanted to avoid a new cold war with the USA. Pence is visiting Singapore on Tuesday to attend the annual summit meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). Australia, India, Japan, and the USA form the Quad formation, which is also an informal defence formation of the USA in the Indo-Pacific.

Mike Pence is also scheduled to visit Papua New Guinea where he will be addressing the APEC Economic Leaders' Meeting. The APEC meeting is taking place on 17 and 18 November.

Trump administration is engaged in mobilising private and government financing in its cold war against China.

OPIC is a US government agency that mobilises private capital.

In the meantime, Ronald O'Rourke, a US specialist in naval affairs, in a report prepared for members and committees of Congress urged the elected representatives to allocate state funds on 24 October.

“The issue for Congress is how U.S. defense funding levels, strategy, plans, and programs should respond to the shift in the international security environment,” he said.

“Trump Administration has highlighted the concept of a Free and Open Indo-Pacific (FOIP), with the term Indo-Pacific referring to the area extending from the west coast of the United States to the west cost of India, aka ‘Hollywood to Bollywood’,” the briefing report further said.

The report was titled: “A Shift in the International Security Environment: Potential Implications for Defense—Issues for Congress.”

“The FOIP concept is still being fleshed out by the Trump Administration,” it noted.



Chinese President Xi Jinping and US President Donald Trump are scheduled to take part in the Group of 20 industrialised nations meeting in Argentina this month.

Trump is looking for "concrete proposals" from Beijing, Mike Pence, who is involved in the FOIP initiative has said.

The hard power war games witnessed recently in the Indo-Pacific are a parallel to the trade war between the USA and China.

Chronology: