U.S., ASEAN nations agree to new set of economic and defense policies

Oct. 12 (UPI) -- Secretary of State Antony Blinken has announced mutually beneficial trade and defensive agreements with representatives of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

Blinken and representative of ASEAN states on Friday concluded a week-long summit in Laos that addressed matters in the Indo-Pacific region and elsewhere.

"The United States and our Indo-Pacific partners are closer and more aligned that ever," Blinken told media Friday in Vientiane, Laos. "The United States is ASEAN's number-one provider of foreign direct investment."

Blinken said 6,200 U.S. companies operate in the region and support hundreds of thousands of jobs in ASEAN states and related jobs throughout the United States.

The past week's meetings and negotiations enabled new trade agreements that Blinken said will accelerate economic exchanges between the United States and Indo-Pacific and ASEAN states.

An example is the ASEAN Single Window, which Blinken said simplifies the process for exchanging customs forms and other documents electronically and reduces transaction times by four days while saving $6.5 billion.

"This is a one-stop portal that will make regional trade faster, cheaper [and] more reliable," the top U.S. diplomat said.

The ASEAN digital economy is projected to exceed $2 trillion by 2030 and an online education platform provides education and training in subjects like science, technology and entrepreneurship to tens of thousands of people, he said.

Artificial intelligence is another tool Blinken said will enable progress toward reducing poverty, ending hunger and make healthcare available to more people.

A new five-year compact also will enable ASEAN states to develop more infrastructure and technological capacity and welcome more students from ASEAN nations to study in the United States.

Blinken said the ASEAN states and the United States will uphold "freedom of navigation and overflight in the South and East China seas," much of which China has claimed as sovereign territory.

"This increasing collaboration across regions reflects the fact that our fates are intertwined," Blinken said. "Making life better for our people requires us to coordinate in novel ways to build new coalitions to reinvigorate and re-imagine existing partnerships."

The U.S. Trade Representative says the ASEAN nations are the United States' fourth-largest trade partners and represent 647 million people while producing $2.9 trillion in gross domestic product.

The ASEAN states include the nations of Singapore, Burma, Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam.