Sen. Richard Lugar (Republican-Indiana) was expected to introduced legislation in October to encourage the Obama administration to launch negotiations on a free trade agreement with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. ASEAN is comprised of Burma (Myanmar), Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Laos, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. The negotiations would be pursued with ASEAN as a whole with the exception of Burma. According to Lugar, the trade restrictions currently in place against Burma should not deter U.S. efforts to negotiate an FTA with ASEAN, which already has deals in place with mainland China, India, Australia, New Zealand and South Korea.

Lugar’s announcement comes ahead of President Obama’s anticipated meeting with ASEAN leaders when he visits Singapore in November for an Asia-Pacific Cooperation Agreement forum summit. Administration officials have given no public indication as to whether any new trade initiative may be announced at that meeting. The White House has been quiet for the past several months on the possibility of pursuing a regional FTA in Asia, an effort the previous administration launched with talks on a Trans-Pacific Partnership among New Zealand, Chile, Singapore and Brunei as a possible precursor to a larger Free Trade Area of the Asia Pacific. U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk said in May that more effective engagement with Asia will be a key component of the Obama administration’s outlook on trade, but according to press reports he backpedalled on a statement that the administration planned to continue the TPP talks.

Even if FTA negotiations were launched with ASEAN at some point in the medium term, a deal would probably take several years to be negotiated by the Obama administration and approved by the U.S. Congress. The U.S. FTA with South Korea, for example, took about a year to be negotiated and signed but more than two years later Congress still shows no signs that it will consider the agreement anytime soon. In any event, an eventual U.S. FTA with ASEAN would likely negatively affect the competitiveness of Hong Kong and mainland Chinese exporters in the U.S. market, although its impact would largely depend on the tariff concessions and origin rules negotiated as part of such a deal.