U.S. Vice President Mike Pence is in Singapore for regional summits during which he will highlight the Trump administration's commitment to keeping the Indo-Pacific region free and open, but where leaders will be watching closely what he will actually offer, both on security as well as trade and investment.

In a briefing to reporters, a senior administration official said the vice president's visit to the region will unveil “concrete, substantive initiatives” to fulfill the “Free and Open Indo-Pacific” strategy outlined by President Donald Trump in the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Da Nang, Vietnam, last year.

The strategy focuses on achieving free markets and freedom of navigation in the region, and replaces the Obama-era “pivot to Asia,” a strategic “re-balancing” of U.S. interests from Europe and the Middle East. 

In Asia, he will likely highlight the American alternative, the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation (USIDFC), a new agency created under the bipartisan BUILD Act. The new $60 billion initiative supports private investments for infrastructure projects around the world.

Marc Mealy, vice president on policy at the US-ASEAN Business Council, a lobby group for American companies, hopes the USIDFC will help position the American business community as a “viable and credible alternative commercial partner” for Southeast Asia.

One of the issues in focus at the Singapore summits is the trade spat between Washington and Beijing, which has left countries in the region on edge.

The U.S.-Sino tariff wars have forced Southeast Asian nations to rethink their business strategy, and there have been winners and losers in different sectors of individual countries.

Countries are also watching the Trump administration's trade and tariff policies with allies in the region. In Japan, Pence pushed Prime Minister Shinzo Abe for a bilateral trade agreement that President Trump hopes will cut Tokyo's trade surplus with Washington.

In Singapore, Pence is expected to continue the U.S. bilateral free-trade agenda with several countries in the region, including Vietnam and the Philippines.

This may be at odds with the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN), which prefers to deal with trading partners as a regional block.

ASEAN already has five free-trade agreements with all of the major economies in Asia-Pacific, including China, Japan, India, South Korea and New Zealand. The regional block is trying to bring all five of the individual deals into a single agreement called the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) that, if concluded, would constitute more than forty percent of the world's population.

Chinese Prime Minister Li Keqiang will attend the ASEAN – China Summit and the East Asia Summit in Singapore and President Xi Jinping will be at APEC. Russian President Vladimir Putin will also be going to the summits in Singapore and Port Moresby.
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