US President Joe Biden will be hosting Association of Southeast Asian Nations leaders from May 12-13 in Washington at a special summit, signalling US efforts to engage with the Asia-Pacific amid intensifying competition with China. Tensions between Washington and Beijing have recently been exacerbated by the launch of several Asian trade agreements, and White House language has been frank in its assessment of China’s role in the region. Against this geopolitical backdrop, the US-Asean Special Summit presents a crucial opportunity for Washington to set the stage for defining the details of its Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF), announced last October. For now, details on the IPEF remain vague. What is known is that it won’t carry the benefits of a free-trade agreement, seeking instead to establish trade rules across four pillars related to trade resiliency, infrastructure, decarbonisation and anti-corruption. Countries can become IPEF members by joining at least one of them. Though still in its infancy, the IPEF is an overt balancing attempt against China and the various regional trade agreements that the US is not a part of. This includes the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), the major regional agreement from which the US withdrew in 2017 in a severe blow to Washington’s credibility and regional clout, given that its members account for 13 per cent of the global economy and 15 per cent of world trade. Washington does not appear to be offering many incentives for Asian partners to join the IPEF. A deeper look, however, shows that the initiative has many advantages: if compromises can be reached and drawbacks intelligently managed, it could very well help lead Asia’s Covid-19 recovery through digital trade and innovation, ultimately bolstering the resilience of regional supply chains. Arguably the most important selling point for the IPEF is the advancement of digital trade, something that regional trade partners have expressed strong hopes for. The issue is of great importance for Asean, a founding member of the China-led Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership . A US-led regional digital agreement could strengthen US leadership on this emerging policy issue and give Washington an arena in which to leverage its competitive advantage against Beijing. Being a global tech innovation powerhouse and rule-setter plays to Washington’s advantage on digital trade, offering tangible benefits to regional partners because it provides an unprecedented opportunity for the sharing of best practices from cybersecurity to digital technology. These are all indispensable for closing digital divides between the region and the US, and enabling greater participation of smaller regional companies in the global digital economy. While China too has been promoting digital trade via the digital silk road , Washington could nonetheless negotiate a digital trade segment that is preferable to regional developing countries. Besides being a technology enabler, the IPEF would include a more liberal rule book on digital governance compared to China’s state-paternalistic approach. To boost Asean’s smart-city dreams, China first needs to build trust Add to this the fears raised by some countries of becoming overreliant on Chinese tech and policy whims, and it’s clear that the IPEF could present a real alternative to China’s efforts. These factors notwithstanding, several sticking points remain. For the US, one of particular importance is the protection of intellectual property (IP) rights across the Indo-Pacific, where regulatory landscapes are lax and opaque. Many Southeast Asian countries are notorious for violating IP laws. Indonesia, for instance, is exemplary as it lacks adequate IP rights protection and enforcement mechanisms, leading to widespread piracy and counterfeiting of US rights holders, particularly in the biopharmaceutical sector. Indonesia also imposes high penalties on patent holders as an incentive to collect patent maintenance fees, for which the country was placed on the US Trade Representative’s “ priority watch list ”. Indonesia is notorious for the opacity surrounding how pharmaceutical products are selected for public procurement, or how prices are determined – effective non-tariff barriers to trade. Pakistan and India have similar issues, and it’s no surprise that, besides China, India, the Philippines, Vietnam and Indonesia were identified as the leading global distributors of counterfeit medicine. Asean leaders should think hard about summit with the US Across the region, foreign firms can be threatened with the disclosure of confidential information as a form of coercion to accept pricing agreements on unreasonable commercial terms. Asean members themselves have long emphasised technology transfer as a direct benefit of foreign investment, on top of the considerable intellectual property theft taking place. As the trend accelerates, it has posed major problems for US producers of information and communications technology (ICT) goods and electronics. The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development reported in 2017 that nearly “43 per cent of seized fake ICT goods infringe the IP rights of US firms”, which also carries with it considerable safety risks for consumers. Any changes to the status quo are unlikely to be welcomed with open arms by regional manufacturers benefiting from current frameworks. Yet these often arbitrary regulatory environments act as an obstacle to innovation and research across several sectors, while hindering the manufacture and distribution of medicines and other intellectual property-intensive goods. Their removal would equate to an improved and more open business environment with all its positive effects. The IPEF should seek to reach a compromise that includes the removal of burdensome regulation in exchange for greater digital economic savvy, itself a route to economic renewal and the creation of new innovative sectors. To achieve this, Washington must engage transparently with its Indo-Pacific partners to create trust, helping make IPEF rules acceptable and durable. Washington’s pick-and-choose approach already offers a flexible and low-risk barrier to entry, and could go a long way towards setting the US apart from China as a regional actor. The region has been calling out for the US to demonstrate not only strategic leadership amid China’s ever-expanding influence, but also economic partnership. Properly delivered, the IPEF may do exactly that. James Borton is a senior fellow at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies Foreign Policy Institute and the author of Dispatches from the South China Sea: Navigating to Common Ground”