Directions: Read the passage given below and answer the questions that follow by choosing the correct/most appropriate options:

On May 23, the Joe Biden administration took a significant step to turn the clock back to the Obama Presidency by launching its own version of a “pivot to Asia” through the establishment of the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity (IPEF) with other partner countries — Australia, Brunei, India, Indonesia, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Malaysia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, and the United States. Within days of its launch, IPEF expanded its membership to the Pacific Island states, with Fiji joining the initiative.

An American initiative to bring together its allies in the Indo-Pacific region to enhance economic cooperation is bound to lead to comparisons with one of former U.S. President Barack Obama’s pet projects, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), which was spiked by Donald Trump immediately after he took over the reins in Washington. The IPEF reignites the twin ambitions of the U.S. to provide economic leadership and challenge China’s hegemony in the region. The U.S. Trade Administration had touted the TPP as “Made in America”, a tag that seems equally appropriate for the IPEF. At its launch, the IPEF was proposed as an elaborate framework of rules covering four pillars, namely, fair and resilient trade, supply chain resiliency, clean energy decarbonization, and tax and anti-corruption. It is not clear whether the original signatories to the IPEF were fully in the know of the details that were unveiled at the launch of the initiative, for there is no record of any prior discussion. However, evidence is available that suggests that Washington has been carefully constructing the framework ever since President Biden had first spoken about it in October 2021 during the East Asia Summit, in the presence of all IPEF signatories except Fiji.

Following its usual process of coalescing the views of all major business interests and the political establishment, the Biden administration sought public comments in March from “interested parties” on the four pillars to assist its trade administration in developing the U.S.’s position in IPEF negotiations. Not surprisingly, major corporations, including Google, Microsoft, IBM, Intel, and Cargill, and influential industry associations such as the Biotechnology Innovation Organization and the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) responded to the call. The IPEF was also discussed in considerable detail in the U.S. Congress, a process that is vitally important to secure bipartisan support for the Biden administration to conduct negotiations to translate the framework into reality.