Japan, Australia, India discuss plan to counter China's trade dominance

India, Japan and Australia have joined hands to counter China’s dominance on trade by working toward achieving supply chain resilience in the Indo-Pacific region.

The trade ministers of Japan, India and Australia discussed the strategy over a video conference on Tuesday (September 1) and instructed their officials to hammer out the details of the plan for launch later this year, according to a joint statement issued after the conference.

Japan’s Hiroshi Kajiyama, India’s Piyush Goyal and Australia’s Simon Birmingham attended the video conference.

Escalating geopolitical tensions across the region has prompted the three nations to build stronger supply chains to counter China’s dominance in trade, Bloomberg reported in August, citing people in Tokyo and New Delhi with knowledge of the matter.

U.S., Japan, Australia and India are members of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, or Quad, a loose grouping for national security consultation.

A senior U.S. diplomat said Monday that the U.S. would like to start formalizing that grouping as the base for a broader security alliance in the region, said a Bloomberg report.