She mentioned “factories that have shuttered and communities who have suffered” in aligning her remarks with Biden’s approach to industrial policy.

His goal is for the federal government to play an active role in the revival of domestic manufacturing, reshaping supply chains, creating local jobs and fighting climate change instead of pursuing free trade deals.

It was on the streets of Detroit in the late 1800s where Henry Ford, the founder of Ford Motors, drove his first car.

A few decades into the 20th century, more than 100 automobile manufacturing companies, including General Motors and Chrysler, had sprung up, giving the city its “Motor City” moniker. Between 1940-1947, Detroit became home to the country’s highest paid blue collar workers and boasted a population of 1.85 million.

Despite being hailed as a success story of American capitalism and modern consumerism, signs of Detroit’s downfall began in the early 1950s as the auto industry started relocating manufacturing units in pursuit of cheaper land and workers.

In the next decade, many of the 20th century factories and residential neighbourhoods were emptied and abandoned. Competition from foreign manufacturers, especially in Japan and Germany, led to shrinking market shares.

By 1980, the city’s population had plummeted by 35 per cent from its peak in 1950 as more manufacturing jobs were lost. For the past 30 years, the population decline has continued. According to the 2020 census, Detroit has been reduced to 632,464 residents.

But the winds of change are blowing again. Michigan Central Station, which was closed in 1988, now represents the future of trade policy that is hinged on the renewal of American manufacturing.

The 30-acre passenger rail depot was acquired by Ford in 2018 and is being transformed into an electric vehicle innovation hub in collaboration with Google. The project is estimated to cost about US$700 million and create more than 2,500 jobs.

“Just a few years ago, this train station was our city’s international symbol of abandonment,” Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan said last year. “Now it’s the symbol of our city’s resurgence.”

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Both American automobile companies and Detroit officials are betting big on Biden’s mission to have at least 50 per cent of new US vehicles be electric by 2030.

The US$135 billion federal investment to realise that goal is tied to bringing offshore manufacturing and good-paying jobs back to the US as it competes for technological and economic supremacy against China, the world’s second largest economy and a global leader in the EV market.

Last July, General Motors said it was setting up “Factory Zero” in Detroit to expand its EV production capacity. In February, Ford announced plans to build a US$3.5 billion plant near the city to make lower-cost batteries for electric vehicles.

Anticipating an EV boom, the city administration is planning to make Detroit “the leader in the Midwest for charging infrastructure”, said Tim Slusser, Detroit’s chief of mobility innovation, emphasising that these efforts will drive new economic opportunities.

“We have been, for the last 100 years, the home of the automotive industry. We’re now embracing what the next 100 years is going to look like,” he added.

Tai shared that sentiment with Apec trade ministers. “This meeting is an opportunity to recognise and honour the generations of working people right up to this present day, who have made Detroit an engine of the US economy,” she told them, adding that it would not be an exaggeration to say that Detroit’s “past, present and future is at the heart” of Biden’s worker-centric trade policy.

Addressing trade ministers and officials from Apec countries, including New Zealand, Chile, Japan and Canada, at an event hosted by Tai, Frederick Redmond, secretary-treasurer of the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations, condemned free trade deals for having a “disproportionately negative” impact on workers and decimating the US’ industrial manufacturing base.

“We are honoured to be here because we have the opportunity to reverse the damage to trade policies with workers at the centre. That’s what this is about,” he said.

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Said Tai as she shared the stage with Redmond: “What has been missed in all of this conversation is the fact that every consumer is also a worker, a wage earner … in order to consume, you also got to have a good job.”

Tai’s enthusiasm for Detroit and Biden’s efforts to bring jobs back to the US more broadly represent a break from the recent history of the administration’s Democratic Party and has yet to fully align with the partners that she seeks to build ties with.

Their attempt to portray Detroit as symbolic of future US trade policy runs counter to the last bloc meeting hosted by the US, in 2011 during president Barack Obama’s administration.

That forum was held in Big Sky, Montana to explore “limitless possibilities”, according to a USTR press release, and to support jobs through exports while increasing cooperation and economic integration across the Asia-Pacific though trade deals.

In contrast to Biden’s approach, however, many small and developing Apec member economies are looking for greater access to free markets and reduced costs.

This poses a challenge for his team trying to sell his vision to regional partners, many of whom are also part of multilateral trade agreements like the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP).

Both agreements offer free-market access and reduced tariffs.

In 2017, Biden’s predecessor, Donald Trump, withdrew the US from the 12-member Trans-Pacific Partnership, the CPTPP’s predecessor, saying the move would protect domestic manufacturing and its workers. The initial deal was signed during the Obama administration to counter China’s rise.

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RCEP: 15 Asia-Pacific countries sign world’s largest free-trade deal

RCEP: 15 Asia-Pacific countries sign world’s largest free-trade deal

The CPTPP agreement currently includes Canada, Mexico, Peru, Chile, New Zealand, Australia, Brunei, Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam and Japan. Together the signatories’ economies account for 10 per cent of the global GDP.

Biden, who took office in 2021, has ruled out rejoining the group, while China has applied for membership. Beijing is also a member of the RCEP, whose ranks include US allies like Japan and South Korea.

Ironically, the city the Biden administration had expected to help further its new trade agenda also became the venue, on the Apec sidelines, for 11 CPTPP member nations to discuss the deepening of trade ties and the bloc’s expansion. The US was obviously absent.

“It’s openly known that we’d all welcome the US at any time that it chooses to come back in,” said New Zealand Trade Minister Damien O’Connor. According to reports, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has also asked Washington to return to the trade deal.

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Non-alignment of Biden’s vision with allies and partners was also visible at the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework ministerial meeting held in Detroit on May 27. The US launched the economic initiative last year to counter China’s influence in the region.

And though the 13 participating countries, led by the US, reached a consensus on building sustainable and resilient supply chains focused on critical minerals and semiconductors, divergence over trade remained.

India, a key regional ally to the US, did not participate in trade talks. The government of Narendra Modi has faced pressure at home to withdraw from the IPEF trade negotiations.

Tai stressed that the US was pursuing different goals. “We’re not just trying to maximise efficiencies and liberalisation,” she said, adding that the purpose was to “promote sustainability, resilience and inclusiveness”.

As overlapping blocs met on the Apec sidelines in Detroit, the road to American leadership in global trade policy looked bumpy.

As outlined by US national security adviser Jake Sullivan the previous month, the Biden administration views traditional trade deals as a “project of the 1990s” that are different from the “project of the 2020s and 2030s”.

“In today’s world, trade policy needs to be about more than tariff reduction,” he said. But many US allies and partners still believe in the traditional model and seem reluctant to fully adopt US’s “new approach”, at least for now.