East Asia Forum Quarterly: Volume 17, Number 4, 2025

Description

Industrial policy has returned to the mainstream, with subsidies as an increasingly popular policy instrument of choice. While East Asia is deeply invested in the open global trade regime, multilateral rules are outdated, weakly enforced and ill-equipped to manage the widening gap among countries with unequal fiscal capacity. This issue of the East Asia Forum Quarterly examines the rationale, forms and effects of industrial policy resurgence, identifying both its risks and the conditions for its success. It argues that regional coordination of industrial policy would require greater transparency and peer review, using existing frameworks as well as new plurilateral agreements for that purpose. The region has the platforms and leverage to lead collective efforts to manage industrial policies without undermining the rules-based multilateral order, but whether it can will depend on mobilising the political will.