contradict with human values, which all should believe in and so on. ..

from egypt would be there and what in my opinion is like the professor alexander mentioned the situation and sinai. we still find many support on what the egyptian government is doing to fight. if we look at the public statements made by the former government it would actually support the terrorist group and their turning the whole situation from one aspiration to the sectarian conflict and i

think it's by you and all that we need to explore the opportunity for more cooperation in fighting. >> my name is craig. excuse me. we talked about decontaminating and proper training of health care workers and the thought struck me that i haven't heard anyone in the press describe how you decontaminate the healthcare worker and seeing as how this is all being taped and presumably going out to a fairly wide

audience, i'm sure there are some of us in the room was actually been through decontamination from down to skin and beyond. it is a very time consuming resource and intensive. then you have to decontaminate the decontaminate verse so it's not easy which goes to your point about training and training often and continuously. if you know, can you describe how to decontaminate a healthcare worker that has been treating someone with ebola? >> of the analogy between the exposure is similar to what you would be concerned about in the cases of being exposed to the

ebola virus from human secretions. so the principles are the same. the principal measure is using bleach and something that will render the virus ad. dead. it is time competitive -- sensitive in the sense that it will start primarily with maintaining the globes and the boots first going through the nerve agent exposure and then retaining a few well the respiratory protection and the gloves as the last pieces of

equipment. it's a very different than in the united states and we would have people that would shower as a final step and change their clothing because they are probably wearing more scrubs underneath and they don't have these good opportunities. in africa they were using gloves and gowns and many of the equipment that we see as disposables they reuse them because it is in short supplies and some of those materials. so that is kind of a rough description. >> [inaudible] >> to give you an example, and i can't remember the exact name of the individuals that you would need approximately 32 gallons of water, eat gallons of bleach. approximately six to eight changes of clothes and two to

three complete coveralls coveralls that would cost about $32 approximately in africa. you also have to have boots that go over your boots. so it is a very intensive process. and as mentioned, yes you just don't have all of those facilities and resources available in africa so a lot of things that are happening shouldn't be happening but we have to -- people in those situations have to improvise and that's why the cost of this epidemic is so high. it's $700 million into sending troops. you have to put the numbers that will be used for all of the

equipment that will be contaminated. it is a very expensive resource intensive process. >> you started off all of that equipment. >> being in the military i look around and say going back to this preparedness the comments about spending for the public good outside of the defense department how many sets of all of that exist in the state of texas that can be brought to the hospital in dallas? >> that is what raises the critical thing they talk strategy or policy and logistics. this is all about logistics and the answer is whether domestically and internationally, supply-chain for these kind of materials to

outbreak but in dallas it is not so sufficient. >> the statement that you made belongs to a great poet that describes all humanities are made by the same creator that belong to the same body and nobody bothers. [inaudible] one quick footnote the professor spoke of the territory that you

referred to in libya and so forth but declared allegiance to isis but in the element that is very important is the financial capability of isis but that capability is very important for them to include people in the refugee camps as well as elsewhere. many save thousands of dollars to allocate for those who would join them and by the way that military background would get

more funding because of their experience. so, number one, when we talk about refugees and this issue that you will discuss it is also i think a potential for future equipment for many years to come. in other words they can become the terrorists of tomorrow. now because of me ask one question the audience is looking to respond. to try to link the issue of the disease the product seems to me can they be predictable. in other words can we do the work to prepare ourselves as you

indicated that it wouldn't have been again. and in the broad sense we refer to can we be prepared to mitigate disasters of what works and what doesn't? stomach that is a great set of questions and i am contacting you we via bear that the future is hard to predict so the answer is i don't know. if you take my page from the book that's called the black swan that has nothing to do with the disasters in the classical sense but economic disasters and it's the whole notion of whether you can predict those things

from happening. in retrospect, you can. we can see the recession of 2008 coming. look at the abuses and loopholes. but the answer is it's in some ways his contention is that in some ways you can't predict these things and really the approach is about preparedness and to become resilient. there are good black swans and data -- bad black swans. in terms of the predictive injuries we know what works for better preparedness.

for an uncertain future probably unreasonable and affordable. >> as the doctor mentioned, we honestly cannot predict anything that we can be prepared for things and what i was pushing for in my talk when i talked about the resources needed for science and technology. the number has funding. we will continue to have the safety net that you talked about because we don't have those labs. we understand and appreciate sometimes those labs and manufacturing facilities we need to have in this nation will not be doing a lot of the act at

work but if we don't have them when the time comes we cannot do that act of work and we also need to invest looking at the ecology of the disease. we haven't recognized all of the disease. if you feel you get the influenza vaccine every year and you will not get influenza, you are mistaken because what is it, 65 to 70% of the people who will get the vaccine will be protected by 30% well. apart from that a lot of people still get something similar to influenza every single year. there are others we have no idea about we haven't invested enough money in those and that is what is needed from the national policy perspective and if we don't do that we will never be able to be prepared for anything. >> we certainly could predict

hurricane katrina. we knew it was coming. but it brings to my mind the comment that you made about rocket science. this is harder than rocket science. if the right numbers in and you are going to lose and so when hurricane katrina comes on sure it's like a pinball machine and you hope to get three cherries but if you don't it's a disaster and you don't really know what you're going to get. you have a combination of human failures and you've got a bureaucratic issues and all these things that affect. finally, yogi berra great american philosopher also said i didn't say all those things that were said i certainly as an

intellectual with presentations here i think that we are all a little bit smarter this afternoon then we were this morning. i think many would say the first inclination would be to throw up your hand. it can to be done. it's just too much. i happened to be the eternal optimist. so i think that something can be done. on page two of the recent study on africa you will notice they said that what we need for the challenge in africa is some kind of a marshall plan type of approach and that is what i would_for this whole topic. it's going to take a long, long, long time.

on the other hand we faced these kind of things before not only in the manhattan projects and things like that but i have to say the second manhattan project i was born in rally new jersey. so we learned a little bit about that as youngsters and so on but the thing we need to remember is all of these challenges, the medical challenges, the nuclear biological chemical challenge and all of the solutions are many times different. you don't do the same thing in the chemical threat as you do in the biological threat.

and when you gather and the other you spread out so these are the kind of things we have to think about. in the 1970s it was extraordinarily complex in terms of whether in terms of physics and ocean etc. it was called the russian submarine threat and it was called the submarine threat as well. it was enormous so much that we didn't want to tackle it but we did and we used an approach where we bit off a little bit of the apple at a time. that's what i think we have to do here. we have to develop a long-range

conceptual plan to call it a campaign plan. this is the end state that we want. we would like to be able to say 75 or 80% chance we will risk these kind of challenge is whether chemical, biological, etc., etc. and then we put together an organization to do that. it will look like the military. it's big enough and the standpoint of the command and control and intelligence and reconnaissance and so that's one of the reasons why animated '90s we formed the army and developed the command for this kind of thing that pulled him different dispersed outfits in the government and otherwise

that were doing this kind of thing and they were big enough to make a challenge. our aim for. the national asset on the marine corps is their whole job to be able to handle this chemical and biological challenge and the decontamination and all that kind of thing. they can be used by the state and local.

we have to marshal the national science foundation and we have to have a tremendous amount. we have to have the ability to pull all this stuff together with a common word today is an integration and above all we need to be able to integrate these pieces of information and knowledge and capabilities into a hole. i don't think that's the american way. we can tackle this challenge and it's going to take a long time. thank you all very much for being with us today. it was a very great panel coming and it was by your comments and questions and thoughts president

obama will travel next week to china and australia to attend a series of asia-pacific meetings including veggie 20 summit. at the center for strategic studies preview to the president's upcoming trip and panelists discussed policies in the region, relations and trade agreements. this is about 90 minutes.

>> good morning and welcome to the center for strategic international studies. we are going to get those fixed. i would like to welcome you we have a terrific briefing. congratulations to the journalists who just got married who's just back from her honeymoon. >> thank you and congratulations. we are going to give you an overview of the trip to the region and then open up for questions. the president will be in china november 10 and 12th for the

asia-pacific economic cooperation summit and the associated summit and a lot of state visits with the president november 1 he's in burma for the east asia summit. from the 15th to 16th they said he would do a major speech on asia policies. i will start with an overview. with the midterm results that good men will focus on the

meeting, the g. 20 in the economic issues, the east asia summit and then the engagement on this trip. it's what's happening on the chirp of the stock recently. i will try to address some of the issues up front. for those of us to travel to the region, the polling shows that in some cases two thirds of americans are not satisfied with the stigall and half of democrats are not satisfied with president obama's leadership style. that squares away with those of us to travel here in the regions across asia.

we found in the strategic elite the policy experts and the countries to the rebound went as he% support but the majority of the respondents said they had no questions about implementation. they may reinforce those concerns and from new zealand to china whether the administration has the wherewithal to actually follow through on the rebound went as advertised. there are some substantive areas of progress. the obama administration has the best attendance than any administration. they've made every regional forum, they've held a far more bilateral security consultancy

and meetings of high-level l. trivia and korea. they showed a pretty consistent high attendance records and the defense department is over within a smaller budget shifting relative resources to the pacific especially to the navy prioritizing the transpacific partnership over other aspects of the trade agenda and despite the pivot and the questions about president obama's leadership right now in our survey which we published last spring it was striking that a significant majority of the elites in asia think that the u.s. will be the world power and outside of china a significant

majority among the allies in asia in the coming years there is a lot of opportunity for the balanced pivot to succeed but there are presence of addressing those and i would highlight these are things we've noted for some time and first they talk about the pivot and it keeps changing and even the kind of bumper sticker keeps shifting a little while -- and the senior officials and cabinet and model of power relations with china. ..

>> the president in past iterations. so there is some confusion, i think, about exactly what the u.s. bottom line is. the president will be giving a speech in bris bonn at the end of the trip. he usually speaks most consistently about asia as an

opportunity to lay down clearly what the strategy is, what the priorities are and what his commitment will be. which gets to the second problem right now which is i think most people who look at asia would argue that tpp, the trans-pacific partnership, is an essential pillar of a credible u.s. focus on the asia-pacific. usgr mike froman, the trade rep, are work hard. the administration strategy, as many of you know, is to get a deal on tpp, particularly with japan, and then use that to sell fast track or trade promotion authority to the hill, convince them to then pass the fast track authority that would allow the deal to be completed. it makes some political sense, but it's completely backwards. every other trade deal we've done we've done the trade promotion authority or fast tracked first and then tpp. that's harder in the u.s. congress, but without it we've

not been able to get deals with major trading partners. why? because they question whether they should be putting their best deal on the table if the president hasn't secured authority from the congress. i was in japan and came back monday, i can tell you that at the highest levels across the japanese government there's a sense that there's progress, there are few issues left, but they're done. they basically put the best keel on the table they're -- best deal on the table they're going to put until they see some evidence, and they were waiting for the midterms, that the white house is going to reach out and work with the congress to get fast track or trade promotion authority. in my view, i think matt agrees, it doesn't actually have to pass before tpp, but there has to be some movement. ambassador froman gave a very compelling strategic speech on tpp to a forum we organized with the chamber of commerce, best rationale i've ever heard, he never mentioned tpa.

so there has to be some outreach for the congress, there has to be some sense in japan in particular that congress, republican congress is onboard, or we're going to very possibly be stuck where we are. with tpp the rebalance of the pivot will have real legs in the last two years of the administration. the president will meet prime minister abe. the dynamics are pretty frosty right now between the u.s. and japan on this, but it's a chance to reboot -- i hesitate to use that phrase -- but i to reboot the politics of this negotiation and try to get it done. the third challenge or problem with the pivot is that there's a broad impression that's hardly new that the u.s. has lost interest in asia, syria, isis, ukraine. it would be key for the president to demonstrate that we're focused on our security commitments in asia. it's a tough balancing act because china's reacting to everything that comes out of the administration and calling it

containment. very unforgiving chinese interpretations of what the u.s. is up to. so let me turn briefly before i hand it to matt on the, on specifics of the u.s./china security problem. matt will do the economic piece. secretary kerry, in his speech at sais, gave a generally positive view of china, optimistic view which i think is appropriate, and he didn't pull punches on some of the key security and political problems we have. he called for several restraint -- self-restraint and code of conduct with respect to the south china sea and territorial disputes where china is using mercantile and maritime prep on smalling states in the region. he raised cyber, tried to frame it as an issue where the u.s. and china could glee because china has a -- could agree because china has an interest in intellectual rights.

he raised hong kong and rights. it's a good framing of the issues and trying to avoid turning these into zero sum topics in u.s./china relations. the problem is although there have been some important chinese contributions, china sent a thousand medics to help with ebola in africa, has promised to cooperate on terrorism at least with respect to the uighurs, although i'm not sure how much that helps us with isis, sent a ship to join rimpac for the first time, naval exercises we do in the pacific, but the fbi has been pretty clear there's no changes in china's positions on cyber. the fbi has been more open about the increase in hacker attacks contributed to china, recently reporting penetration of u.s. military contractors, computer systems. and the fbi has revealed major

data downloads of nonmilitary u.s. health care data from china. and on the south south china sed east china sea on the maritime front also no real change. there was some hope that the coast guard and naval activities in the south china sea vis-a-vis vietnam last summer when they ended, that there might be a more relaxed chinese attitude, certainly in the east china sea and japan the number of incursions by chinese ships went down, but the incursions into japan went right back up. and then in october there was a two week period where some people saw some optimism because the number of incursions by chinese coast guard vessels into and around the -- [inaudible] went down, but when the data came out, that was because of tsunami. excuse me, because of typhoons and weather. and, in fact, the operations

around the south china sea are at a routine, regular level now with daily incursions by the coast guard. and what's troubling is the pla navy, which used to operate two and a half, three hours' sailing time away is now within two hours' sailing time. so it has gotten closer to what's, basically, a coast guard standoff. and then in the south china sea, you've probably seen reports that china is expanding its military runway at woody island which can beijing has announced will be used for regular patrolling of the district in which a lot of people see as a precursor to another announcement of an air defense identification zone, adiz, comparable to what china did in the east china sea. so this is a tough nut to crack for the president. you can wrap it in rhetoric, you can try to build confidence, but the facts on the ground or at sea are still not a crisis, but are still trending in a way

that's going to make this a challenging trip. so let me end there and turn it over to matt. are we still using our -- >> yeah, we're going to -- [inaudible] [inaudible conversations] >> no? okay. [inaudible conversations] okay. thanks, mike. so economics is going to run throughout this trip on almost every, at almost every stop, and i think there are broadly three themes that will run throughout the trip; growth, trade and infrastructure. the good news is that everyone in the region wants all three of those things. the challenge is that there are some pretty significant differences about how to go about achieving those things. so that's just a sort of preamble. just to take the three economic

stops, as it were, first apec. the apec summit, as mike said, will be held on november 10th and 11th at a suburb of beijing, about 50 kilometers north of beijing. just a quick background, apec was established in 989 elevated to leader's level in 1992, so this is the 22nd summit. apec as a group is made up of 21 asia-pacific economies, and if you're writing about this, be sure to say economies and not countries. it's designed to promote regional economic integration. china last hosted, paris and last time it -- first and last time it hosted apec was in september 2001, a few weeks after 9/11. china has laid out three basic themes for its apec year, one is regional economic integration which is a standard theme for

apec. every host has that as one of its three themes. secondly, economic growth, structural reform particularly with the adjectives innovative and inclusive growth and reform attached to that theme. and then thirdly, connectivity meaning both hard and soft connections of infrastructure, people, institutions across the asia-pacific region. and this is where infrastructure comes up. it's going to be a major topic. there's been a lot of work in apec over a number of years, and there'll be a focus probably this year on public/private partnerships creating the enabling environments for infrastructure investment in the region and generating long-term private sector financing for infrastructure. then apec does a whole bunch of under those three themes a whole bunch of pick and shovel work to promote greater trade and

investment in the region including it has a commitment to a 10% improvement in supply chain performance by 2015, so a focus on global value chains which is really the story on trade in asia, fossil fuel subsidies, health, anti-corruption, women's empowerment -- oh, there we are. a whole array of issues that apec covers, quite a broad agenda. there are three non-headlines as it were from apec. one is tpp, as mike mentioned. tpp is actually, in some sense, born from the rib of apec. it's made up of 12 of the 21 apec economies. and it is a path towards the ultimate apec vision of a free trade area of the craze-pacific. -- asia-pacific. as mike said, right now the negotiations are not completed. there had been a hope that tpp might be agreed by the time of

this apec summit. that is, i think, now we can say with great certainty not going to happen. the key dynamic that needs to change is the u.s. and japan, as mike said, need to agree on a bilateral market access deal. that is quite close. there is a maybe tiny hope that that could be done before next week, but i would say that's also a pretty unlikely at this point. and as mike said, tpa is key to this. so the question whether the noises yesterday by the president and the republican party leaders was promising because it indicated that trade and tpa specifically were one of the things that they might be able to agree on. a second thing that is probably not going to be a headline here except in a way that i'm sure some of you will write about the free trade area of the asia-pacific. there was a chinese goal this year of setting a deadline for

achieving a free trade area of the asia-pacific and doing a feasibility to start negotiations towards that end. that is now probably not going to be part of this. free trade area of the craze-pacific is something the u.s. championed back in 2006, 2007. so it's part of the apec story, but the u.s. and other tpp partners are reluctant to agree to a firm deadline to achieve a free trade area of the asia-pacific and a feasibility study towards that end until tpp is completed. and then the third thing that will be sort of lurking around but not central are to the apec agenda is the asian infrastructure investment bank which china proposed recently and an mou was signed two weeks ago, i guess, among 20 apec -- i'm sorry, 20 asia-pacific countries. and this is a chinese initiative

to promote a greater infrastructure investment, as i mentioned, in the region. so far some of the major countries in asia have not signed on. india has signed on, indonesia may sign on soon, but korea, australia, japan, the united states have not signed onto this bank, and i can talk more about that. but that's going to be sort of lurking around the apec corridors. >> [inaudible] >> it works now? okay. there we go. that's heavy, i think. okay. just to do g20, i'm skipping, so the trip chronologically we're now skipping from the apec meeting in china to the g20 meeting in brisbon, australia. again, this is the ninth summit of the g20 leaders since the first summit in washington in

november 2008. it's actually -- the g20 is actually a g49. i counted last night. it's actually 19 individual countries plus the european union which brings another 28 minus four e.u. states that have their own seats plus six invited guests, and those invited guests this year are spain, singapore, myanmar as the chair of asean, mauritania as the chair of the au, senegal as the chair of the new economic partnership for african development or nepad and for a reason that is not entirely obvious other than oceanic solidarity, new zealand will also be there this year. australia has laid out two themes for the g20 this year; growth and resilience of the global economy. is very traditional core of the

g20, that's what the leaders have been talking about since they met first in 2008, how to preserve and enhance global growth. obviously, right now global growth is weaker than everybody would like. the u.s. is growing, but not as fast as it might following a deep recession. and everybody else has growth challenges. europe is on the brink of recession, possibly deflation. china's slowing, japan is still struggling to get on to a faster growth trajectory. so growth is something that everybody in that room at the g20 is going to be very concerned about. the specific australian approach to deal with growth is to get the finance ministers in the g20 back in february to agree to a target for raising global growth, actually raising global gdp by 2% over five years from

the level of gdp that would be implied by current policy trajectory. so by 2018 the goal is to have an additional 2% of global gdp. and to put in place new policies that would achieve that objective. so everybody is going to come to the brisbane summit with individual growth strategies to achieve that target or to contribute to that target, and those growth strategies are probably going to center around, again, infrastructure, trade, deregulation, competition, structural reform. just a quick word on trade. the g20 has done two things on trade since the first summit. one is to make a commitment to stand still, a standstill on protectionist measures. that commitment has been honored in the breach in many small

ways, but fundamentally at least we have not slid into the 1930s-style protectionism, so they'll repeat that. it's also tried to encourage the doha round of multilateral trade to get to conclusion. that has not succeeded yet, although last year they did encourage this trade acceleration agreement in bali. unfortunately, india has since blocked implementation of that agreement. but that will be another topic of conversation. and i think this year there'll be a focus in trade on global value chains again. the rest of the agenda is under the resilient banner -- resilience banner. there will be financial regulatory reform, a central core of the g20 from the beginning. i think largely you're going to see a victory lap about all the good measures the financial stability board has put into place to strengthen bank capital standards to deal with firms, banks that are too big to fail, to deal with shadow banking,

over-the-counter derivatives. and also under resilience tax, tax agreements both to deal with tax evasion and tax avoidance. i think that may be the biggest headline thing that the australians are hoping to come out of this summit, on evasion. there's already been agreement to automatic transfer of information on tax holders to crack down on tax evasion. and then on tax avoidance, there's a focus on base erosion and profit shifting or beps in the terminology, and there's a two-year action plan to deal with that. so that's going to be a major focus. also on the agenda will be international financial institution reform. that's been on the agenda since the beginning. what's holding that up right now is the united states congress has not passed the enabling legislation to implement imf quota reform, and the u.s. is paying a big price for that in the g20 and more broadly in

terms of the global economic governance story. and then there'll be some energy work, transparency of energy markets, fossil fuel subsidies, energy efficiency and then creating a more up-to-date architectture for dealing with energy issues since you have, you know, the old world of opec and the iea, but all of that needs to come together. finally, just one final thing about the g20 is that the australians are aiming to have, and you'll be very glad to hear this as journalists, a three-page communique. if they achieve that, it will be historic, and i very much wish them luck with that. finally, just on the -- now skipping back to china, the bilateral stop in china just very quickly, economics, as you know, has been a traditional source of stability in the u.s./china economic relationship, but there is growing friction in the economic relationship. so the goal, i think, of both president obama and president xi

are going to be remove or manage that friction and to find ways to expand cooperation in economic matters. again, both sides have a mutual interest in strong and balanced growth, and the u.s. side i think there's going to be quite a focus on domestic economic reform in china to promote growth, but also to level the playing field for u.s. business there, so there'll be a u.s. focus on sort of the old chestnuts of intellectual property protection, industrial policies and so fort. plus -- so forth. plus, some new, serious concerns on cybersecurity and on the implementation of the anti-monopoly law in china which is, in the view of u.s. business, has been implemented in a discriminatory way. and then china's going to probably focus on the investment climate here in the united states and on high-tech exports

from the united states to china. both sides are going to try to put an emphasis on the bilateral investment treaty. negotiations towards which have been underway for a number of years but which the two sides agreed to accelerate last year. in theory, they're going to complete the framework of this at the end of this year, and china's going to come forward with a negative list of investment restrictions early next year. but, frankly, this is going to be very tough slogging. it's going to take probably at least a couple more years to get to conclusion on a bilateral investment treaty. but i think that's going to become a new organizing principle of bilateral organizations. and then you'll have cooperation on related issues like climate change, ebola, and then there will probably be talk about the trans-pacific partnership and the asian infrastructure bank. but i'm happy to talk more about that if you're interested. >> great. we'll go to our southeast asia

chair, eddie bauer. >> thanks, matt, and welcome, everybody. it's great to see standing room only on aing so by morning in washington. i'm glad to see the washington media has pivoted towards asia. that's very good. welcome to csis. this is going to be a tough trip for the president. when he, i think when southeast asia looks at this trip and him coming, they're wondering, you know, who is barack obama now after the midterm elections? and i think they will want to -- they'll be trying to discern whether he has the commitment and political capability, political capital to follow through on earlier commitments that mike talked about. and i think that's important. i think they'll measure, they'll measure him on particularly economics. for southeast asia economics is the foundational bedrock of security in asia.

and that means tpp. so i think the southeast asians are going to want to hear from the president, who i think has probably been spending political capital on elections and not on trade but is quickly shifting gears as we know and who is meeting the republicans, i think, tomorrow -- friday. yeah, tomorrow, to talk about areas they can agree on. it looks like trade is one of those. that's very positive. and i think that will be seen very positively by southeast asian leaders. other signals that they expect from the white house, they've already seen sort of a hint, you know? southeast asia was sort of mystified by the cancellation of secretary of defense chuck hagel's trip that was planned for vietnam and myanmar earlier this week. that's being read as an indication the white house wants to focus on the economic aspects of the pivot. they will, the southeast asians will be looking for that when he arrives in myanmar or burma for

his, for the east asia summit and the asean summit. this'll be the ninth east asia summit. president obama will be getting back on track. you know, remember that he missed last year's east asia summit because of budget wrangling with the very same republicans that have now taken the senate. he, he'll be back. they'll be looking at, the u.s. will look at eas very much as a security and political aspect of their pivot whereas they view apec and tpp as the economic element of their pivot or rebalance to asia. that's not the way the southeast asians see it necessarily. and i think this is something that i hope the white house will work with economic managers and the u.s. government to address as they look to pivot 2.0 or a resetting of the pivot.

southeast asia can't imagine an economic strategy for the united states, for asia that count include china. so tpp looks a little strange to them. tpp is, as matt mentioned, includes 12 countries including the united states, but it's not eligible -- i mean, not even all the countries are eligible to join tpp. so i think everybody wants to see tpp get done. they want to see the president spending political capital on that. i think the southeast asians believe that the indicator for that will be a strong statement out of the friday meeting with congressional leaders and a commitment to actually get tpa, trade promotion authority, which they'll see as a down payment of political capital by the white house on trade. next year the malaysians will host the east asian summit, and that -- so a lot of attention will be put this year on the

structure of the east asia summit. i think the americans and the white house will want to talk about rationalizing a structure, how to work, how the asean regional forum and the asean defense ministers plus meetings relate to the eas. so i think you'll see some work on the structure of the eas ahead of its tenth anniversary. the president will also participate in the u.s.-asean summit which is now a summit. it has been institutionalized since president obama's been in office from a leaders meeting which was a clever way to say white house wasn't sure they were going to show up every year for a u.s.-asean meeting. it's now a summit. i think great create to president obama and the asean side for institutionalizing this important level of engagement. i think the white house wants to emphasize economic engagement in

asean which is smart. i think they're going to make a case for the incredible stock of investment in asean, and i know some math is being done over at the white house, and you'll hear more about that. but as a preview -- and i think we've talked about this at csis concern u.s. investment in asean is multiples greater than it is in china. it is nearly ten times as great as it is in india, and if you look at total u.s. investment in asean relative to other investors in asean and you include energy, we are the biggest investor in asean by a factor of over two times. after the meetings he does in myanmar's capital, and for those of you who are skateboarders, there's ten-lane roads that have no cars on them. really enjoy that. [laughter] he will go to -- and he'll do, i should say he'll do a bilateral with the president of myanmar

there. you can tell the white house is managing the myanmar very carefully by the fact that the president called both the president of myanmar and often song suu kyi --up song suu kyi, the leader of the opposition this week, to get ahead of that trip. the president has three issues to manage in the myanmar situation. first and, i think, foremost on most people's minds is the 2015 election. right now often song suu kyi cannot run. she's precluded by the burmese constitution from being eligible to run for president. i think the americans would like to see constitutional changes made before the election so that she would be able to run. there's going to be a question, and i think this'll be a hard one between the white house trying to support continued reform, economic and political

reform in myanmar, because after all, this is a country that had cloistered it for nearly four and a half decades and has made an incredible amount of political and economic reform. but i think there's a real push from senate and house legislators including the new senate leader, mitch mcconnell, on human rights and democracy in myanmar. so the president's going to have to address this, and i think he should. the fact that democracy and reform in myanmar cannot be allowed to stall, i think they're also, there's a recognition that you have to be practical about how much change the country can handle at one time. the other two issues that he has to address while he's there are the plight of the 40 he can da -- row he can georgia, and i think steve will talk about that, and the effort to achieve

regional ceasefires. if myanmar has a strong core burman population, but they have ceasefire negotiations with a wide group of minority, minorities on the periphery of that center. and actually that's going very well. so sovereign, the sovereign integrity of myanmar is important, and those ceasefires having a political basis, not just a military basis, is vital. and finally, i think it's a very important story that this is the new president of indonesia's coming out party. better known as joko wi will be at the apec, eas and g20 meetings. there was earlier fear that he might not go to the g20. he's going. and i think -- and president obama will meet him for the first time and do a bilateral with him, i think, in brisbane, in australia.

and that should be a very important meeting. indonesia is half the population of asean. it's got half of asean's economy, and i think what we are going to see, folks, is a much more -- it may be nuanced and may have characteristics of japanese characteristics which means nuanced and indirect, but i think the indonesians are going to play a very big role in areas like foreign policy and national security concerns in the east asia summit and in asia generally. under his five-year term. and coming to that, i think one thing that you'll see out of the east asia summit and the u.s. asean summit is a growing determination to stand up to china on the maritime security threat that china has very practically posed. mike mentioned, and he's

correct, that the chinese have not let off, their foot off the gas on the south china sea. rhetoric from china on a code of conduct is really, the best way to look at this is like the charlie brown cartoon where china would be lucy holding the football, and asean is charlie brown trying to kick it every time. the chinese are holding it saying we're serious this time, come on, come on, kick it, and then they pull it back every time. so i think asean really wants the united states to continue its role in putting this on the agenda, talking about it. and we see increased asean cohesiveness behind the south china sea issues. there's also a quiet determination in the asian countries, despite as matt mentioned, many of them joining the asean infrastructure investment bank for the united

states not to be in a defensive crouch on these economic initiatives. i think the united states has been put into that sort of reactive mode on the asian infrastructure investment bank, also on the free trade area of the asia-pacific feasibility study, and the way to get around this is play offense. and i think what we haven't seen from all the good things from this white house, we have not seen a comprehensive economic strategy for asia. it's not hard to put in place. they've got all the pillars of it right. but if they can, if they can get their act together and articulate a strategy, i think southeast asia and the rest of asia will be game for that. and they're very much interested in not having a sino-centric order of economic integration or, god forbid, political

integration in asia. so thank you very much, and i'll -- >> we're going to wrap up with steve morris, with remarks from steve morris. dr. morris is the direct or of our global health program. when we wrap up, please use the microphone for those on the periphery, and if you could identify yourselves, that will be very helpful. >> thank you. andrew, thank you very much for pulling us all together, and good morning. i'm going to speak briefly about a mission that we had to myanmar recently, in late august, but before that, a few words about ebola. you know, the president yesterday announced a $6.1 billion supplemental for ebola. the majority of that money for overseas purposes, both in west africa and in support of the broader global health security agenda. that's a lot of money. it's twinned with the isis

request, and clearly it's something that's going to have to be negotiated carefully with congress, and it may carry a price tag to it in terms of compromise on travel bans. and going out to asia, he's going to raise the issue of getting others to do more. we have been the lead, the lead power in the response with a billion dollar plus commitment on both the military and civilian side. this steps up the game significantly. we cannot do this alone. others have come to the; the u.k., the world -- to the table, the u.k., the world bank, the e.c. and others. but the response from other parts of the world and other major powers has been very paltry. and this is despite a very aggressive diplomacy led by ambassador nancy powell and john

kerry and others. australia announced a $24 million commitment recently following the announcement of the travel ban which was itself quite controversial. china is the exception within the region in terms of its response. it's announced up to $200 million of commitments. it's deploying several hundred health workers. it's making the case it has special capacities and experiences dating back to sars and pandemic flu response. most of its efforts are concentrated in sierra leone whereas u.s. responses are concentrated in liberia. this is a very welcome, positive development, to have the chinese making a commitment of this kind. for multiple reasons. the region itself is alive to the threat of ebola. you'll see this in terms of intensified scanning at airports and other points of entry. you'll see this, the region is really quite alive to the threat.

and i think that's changed significantly in the last sick weeks. concern six weeks. i will try to minimize any of the redundancy with ernie's comments, which i completely agree with. the delegation that we took out in august to myanmar as a follow-on to an earlier mission a year previous focused on health, this one was one we did jointly with the southeast asian studies. the co-leader of that, i hope he's here, with me. we went out there really prompted by what we saw as a hardening of attitudes here in washington away from a sort of forward-leaning optimism about this transition and towards one that was moving towards harder negative conclusions that things were regressing or stalled. and we framed up this around that question of which direction are things going. and we put a focus on the governance issues, around elections and constitutional reform, around the peace

negotiations with the ethnic states and around the development agenda with a special focus on health. congress is moving to be more aggressive and impose greater restrictions legislatively. the opinion climate has hardened, and that's something that the president has to deal with. as he moves forward here. just in terms of our impressions, the electoral season is fully upon folks in myanmar. you will see that this has become a, an overriding prism, that there's a lot of excitement, there's a lot of interest. this is, there's a lot in play. and we don't know what's going to happen in terms of these constitutional provisions that ernie pointed to and what will, ultimately, be the calculus of often sang sign chi and the ethnic states. this is a very fluid set of negotiations and back and forth right now.

there was a commitment towards federalism and long-term negotiations on the political agenda. there's been further bad news around that which we detail in our report, so it's back and forth and still hard to draw conclusions. on the health agenda, what's remarkable is that you have major interests; the global fund, the world bank, the usg using its role, the u.k. on a long-term basis to facilitate the reform of that sector and major advance. and as we detail in this report, they are beginning to show substantial, substantial gains. but they're making those calculations on a three to five-year time frame. it's not keyed to whether the electoral cycle is successful at the end of 2015, it's keyed on the notion that there's a government to work with, there are partners to work with, the environment is favorable and that international organizations and ngo and others can move ahead. related to that on health we put a big focus on resistant

malaria. that may sound like a purely technical issue but, in fact, it's a threat to disable the therapies that exist globally right now in control of malaria. the resistance is centered within myanmar and within the greater mekong subregion, and there's an enormous amount of activity underway right now to begin to combat that. we put quite a bit of detail and emphasis on this. the militaries have to be wrought into the equation, they are being brought in. the global fund has done a remarkable job of putting resources in, the gates foundation and the like. ernie mentioned -- [inaudible] during our visit where we spent a lot of time talking to the parties about this, both government, usf, u.n. and others, it was a fairly brutal assault back in march upon the staff and theup. the state-federal union authorities pretty much abdicated responsibilities and stood back while that happened, and now there's been a process of trying to repair the damage.

the president has put special emphasis on this, congress has put special emphasis on this. this is a problem that is terribly complicated and difficult to reconcile and move forward and is not going to be fixed tomorrow. but it's something we can't turn away from, nor have we. and i think the u.s. embassy and derek mitchell, ambassador mitchell, has done a sterling job at putting a stake in the ground, standing up to this abuse and insisting upon holding the government to account for it, and i think deserves enormous amount of credit on that. i won't go into detail about the buddhist on muslim violence, land grabs, crackdowns on journalists. but the, it's in the report. on the big issues around the constitutional matters and the electoral preparations and the like, it's just stay tuned here. our view is that the u.s. has struck a middle path of being engaged, but being cautious and continuing to call out those

areas that are most problematic. the u.s. engagement there draws broad and wide support across the political spectrum. it continues -- we have been able to navigate as a country a very difficult and politicized environment. i mentioned about -- [inaudible] needs to continue to push that. on the electoral piece, which is going to be the central prism leading into 2015 for making judgments, ndi, iri, ifis are on the ground, operational and doing a terrific job. we put a spotlight on that and call for stepping up that effort in specific ways. on the health we applaud what has happened and call for a doubling of the u.s. bilateral engagement and continued very strong support around the global fund and the world bank. just in closing, we need to be realistic around u.s. leverage, we need to be realistic around this complex transition.

we should not rush to judgment around making headline conclusions, cat goric conclusions about where things are and where they're going to be in another year, because i'm not sure that's a particularly prudent way to judge something as complicated as this. thank you very much. >> thank you, steve. and we're going to open it up to questions. first i'm going to go to george condon. >> thanks. two questions. one, you talked about some specific things on u.s./china relations. how would you characterize the overall state of the relationship? and secondly, what role does this election play? you've mentioned the little things, but how much has the region and region alleyeders paid attention to -- regional leaders paid attention to the u.s. election and this guy they once saw as a rock star, do they see him as a weak lame duck? are they looking past him? what -- does he have to prove to them that he's still a leader on this trip?

>> i think the china-watching community in general in washington has been a bit surprised that xi jinping as leader has been less accommodating and tougher than expected. the saying in beijing one hears now is he talks like mao -- excuse me, talks like cupping, acts like -- like dung, acts like mao. and the expectation was that simultaneous pressure against india, japan, the us a january countries, cyber -- asean countries, cyber attacks on the u.s., that this would lead to a natural pushback. and, indeed, as ernie said for asean -- which tends not to like tension -- there has been an unprecedented amount of pushback. but what's been surprising is it hasn't appeared to lead to any calibration in chinese foreign policy. so i would characterize the

u.s./china relationship as one that is not in a downward spiral, but one where a heightened level of tension is the new normal. and the challenge for the president is to continue framing the relationship in a win/win way because, as matt and others have said, on economic -- on broad economic issues, management of north korea and regional integration, we're still generally on side. it's noteworthy that china is hosting apec. apec is a trans-pacific grouping. it's putting enormous effort into it. this is not an apec summit in beijing that's designed to push the u.s. out. quite the contrary, china wants to accelerate movement on the free trade area of the asia-pacific. which would include all the apec members -- us, mexico, chile, canada and so forth. the reason the administration and others are saying no is because it's taos. we have to get t -- too fast.

we have to get tpp done and through the congress for two reasons. one is to set the rules before we get into deep negotiations with china, and the second is that congress can't digest a trade are agreement right now that includes china. so we're slowing china down a little bit, but in some ways china's major theme for this is more integration. so the overall context is not one of downward spiraling hostility, but the level of tension is higher: the chicago council on global affairs last year released its biannual survey of american views of the world. 49% of americans say u.s./china relations are adversarial, 48% said they're cooperative, only 3% of americans didn't have an opinion. that's probably about right. >> i would just say on, you know, what what do the asian les think, is he a rock star, is he a lame duck, i think the jury's out. the hope is -- and i think the narrative among a lot of the

elites including leaders -- is that president obama has the ace ya engagement dna in his blood. it's what he wants to do, but he's been sort of hijacked by domestic politics and the elections in the united states and that now he may be able to turn to asia for legacy issues. look, the guy wants -- he said himself, his self-prophesy was i will be the first pacific president of the united states. he speaks -- [inaudible] indonesia, he was born in hawaii, grew up in indonesia, and for the southeast asians, they do hope this is a guy who can help talk to americans and set a foundational understanding among not just politicians, but among americans that asia is vital to the future of ourselves, our kids and future not only our jobs, but our security. and i think that's the hope.

so there's still that hope there that because he lost the election, that that's what he'll have to accommodate, work with the republicans, do trade and then start to talk to americans about asia. >> i just want to make sure i got one fact right. i'm trying to remember what i said. the chicago council said 49% said cooperative, 48% said add adversarial. think i said it the other way around. >> gideon. >> hi. you -- it sounds like there's kind of almost a tacit battle between the u.s. and china over sort of gaining friends in asia, and you mentioned that asean was kind of welcoming american engagement and american pushback existence china in the south china sea. is are other divisions? -- is there other divisions? which countries in that grouping are leading more towards china? cambodia was one that was always identified, but thailand perhaps? >> yeah, i think the it's a fair question. i think from asean's point of view we have to remember balance

over everything. balance in everything. so if it was the americans that were playing, you know, complete offense and we had all the ideas and china was on its back foot, there would be a demand for more chinese engagement from the aseans. we have to be careful about understanding that. but right now we have a historic window in the united states, you know? it's the three a. obama has concern three as. obama has abbott in australia pulling for him, he's got abe in japan and asean. everybody's lined up. they want to see the americans playing offense in asia because of the proximity, geographical proximity of china, because of china's, this disconnect between china's rhetoric, what it says it wants to do and what it's actually doing on and under the seas. that worries asean. and, quite frankly, they want it all.

they want, they want china to feel safe, secure and be economically successful so that they can share in that success. but they want the americans also to be economically engaged, successful and deeply engaged on a security basis so china doesn't use its newfound economic might to impose its own definitions of sovereignty on smaller neighbors. >> [inaudible] >> you know, i personally, gideon, i think this is overplayed, you know? i've talked to the cambodians a year and a half ago, and they told me, you know, you guys misunderstand where we are on china. we want the americans to be engaged. he sounded like every other asean leader to me. he wants balance. now, in practice his foreign minister has been off the reservation on that front. i mean, and that's being very kind because cameras are rolling. but i actually don't think it's

particularly useful to do sort of a spectrum of the asean countries on this issue. >> kristin. >> thank you very much. >> use the microphone, please? >> thank you. what should president obama's message be on hong kong? obviously, a loot of americans -- a lot of americans watch the pro-democracy protesters, they're going to have a lot of interest in that. how fine of a line does he need to walksome and also in terms of the constitution and myanmar, is it realistic to think that it can change before the elections, and what specifically would have to happen? what does that process look like? thank you. >> on hong kong there's concern in the administration because, um, within chinese media and government circles there are accusations that the united states is the evil hand -- >> right. >> -- behind the protests.

my recommendation would be don't worry about that, that the president should speak out clearly for, in support of what these people in hong kong are asking for. i think there are ways to wrap it in language that suggests this is good for china's development, good for china's relations with other parts of asia or across the straits of taiwan and so forth. but i think, as margaret thatcher might say, this is no time to go wobbly. and judging from secretary kerry's speech at sais, i think that's where they're coming down. it's always harder to do this in beijing and you don't control the media environment. and maybe secretary kerry was saying it so the president wouldn't have to talk about it so loudly. but president bush did, and he

found ways to talk about religious freedom and other issues. but to frame it in terms of what's in china's interests, ultimately. >> if i could just maybe stitch the two together. i think, i sure hope mike is right. i think the americans have to talk about this, the president has to talk about this because if you look around asia, there's a lot of analysis going around that democracy is being sort of stepped back. i think that's absolutely wrong. and i think if you look at the two, the two events that are happening at the same time, democracy protests in hong kong and work i rising out of -- wi rising out of nowhere, not part of any political party, not part of a sky onof -- scion of a great indonesian, wealthy family. i and have made the case i think southeast asia notwithstanding i think we have sort of a bubble

going on in thailand is moving forward. the middle class, empowered middle class is going to move forward, and they want to hear president obama supporting this kind of event. on myanmar, i'll ask steve to comment since he's just been on the ground. but that's a very good question. it is legally possible to -- or there is time to change the constitution. politically, very hard to see how that would happen. it would be extraordinary. and i think part of what the white house is trying to manage right now is the honest read is it's almost impossible to get that done before the elections and partially because the elections are coming. but, and so if that, if it doesn't happen, i think what we should be would about is throw -- we should be worried about is throwing the babyout with the bath water and saying, well, myanmar's economic and political reform has failed

because they didn't get across the lewin. i personally haven't -- the line. i personally haven't spent a lot of time in myanmar, quality time with often song suu kyi. she didn't say this, but i felt like she -- i thought there was an understanding there that she wants this change before the election. but if it can't be, i think there's the iron determination to continue to fight. and maybe if her party, nld, wins, i thought she thought that there was room to get enough votes potentially to make changes after winning and controlling the parol. the parliament. >> we detail in here there's two provisions that have been at play. one provision within the constitution is the one that bars her because of citizenship issues, and the second is the provision around the set aside of 25% of parliamentary seats for the military. most of the debate within the

constitutional committee of the parliament has centered around this. and i agree spirally with ernie. i think the -- entirely with err anywhere. i think the signals are pretty clear we're not going to see, the odds of seeing resolution of the first of those two or the second to open the process sufficiently where there's a clear shot at full victory, those odds are low. and we face a predicament here which is, first of all, she has -- she and the opposition have to make an internal calculation at some point in time about how much do they lean in and play and how much do they lean back and not play. and those determinations have not been made yet. but the u.s. government faces a broader predicament of trying, you know, how do we reach judgment on what's free and fair, ultimately, in what happens in 2015 if it doesn't include those major reforms and an opportunity to have a full, a full run at possible victory? and i think that's what ernie's

getting at, that beyond those 2015 elections there's a real question of what is the u.s. approach and what's good enough or what's sufficient to be able to continue? because the election outcome is going to determine, i think, a great deal of what our bilateral relationship looks like post-2015. >> could i say on this one i'd fault the administration. there was high level engagement. secretary clinton took a risk on this policy issue, kurt campbell and others at senior levels. they achieved an important historic shift. they, the white house chalked it up as one of the, you know, signature achievements of the pivot, and then except for our friend and fierce alumni, alumnus derek mitchell in rangoon, senior officials in the state department and white house dropped this. and now the president's going, in my sense -- i'm not talking about civil society engagement or colleagues at the table, i'm

talking about senior u.s. officials -- i think they just put this on the scoreboard, and they dropped it, and now they're scrambling. and there probably should have been a higher level, sustained engagement not just to turn the corner with myanmar, but to make sure that we were engaging at high levels to make sure we didn't hit the difficulties we're having now. i'm not -- i think i'm with my colleagues. i'm not sure we could have orup sang suu kyi could have achieved a free, full election in 2015, but you look at the range of problems we have, i think we would have benefited from more high level engagement over the last two years than we've had. >> thank you. her -- [inaudible] with market -- heather. [inaudible] with market news international. you mentioned that the reform is jeopardizing u.s. legitimacy or u.s. leadership in the region. can you give specific examples of how that's costing the u.s., the failure to pass that reform?

and also you'd said that the u.s. needs a comprehensive strategy on asean, that they've got the pillars but don't really have the full strategy. can you explain more what you mean and what that would look like? ..

everybody is implemented is in the u.s. has failed to implement it because the unwillingness to improve -- there is a budgetary hit but it's relatively minor and it is a transfer of money that was already committed to another part. i think that has had a tremendously damaging impacts for the united states ability to sway others onto the issues or the broad growth issues in the g. 20 and specifically i think it sad that the frustration of the large emerging economies that want more voice in the economic governance and i think that you can draw a line to run this commitment directly to the establishment of this infrastructure bank which may end up being useful pieces of

the architecture depend on how they end up being governed by think just in terms of if the u.s. has an interest in supporting the best elements of the system that helps champion in 1944 than it needs to follow and do this reform and i am hopeful in a new congress this will be taken up again and passed quickly because it is getting in the way of a lot of the things we are trying to do in the region. is there an economic trade impact as well? >> in a broad sense i think it is affecting our ability to be a champion of the rules-based that we are trying to uphold. i don't think it's specifically comes up in the negotiations on the enterprise reform but i think in a broad sense it does affect the credibility and

effectiveness. >> we have important pillars in place where it is not a u.s. strategy for engagement economically. it's an important pillar if we did doubt it would have set a high level rules-based model others could dip into. we need to do that but what we are failing to do is articulate dot basically to connect the dots of the bilateral investment treaties that we have negotiated in the free trade areas with australia, korea and singapore. but we need to do is articulate the vision for why asia is important to americans and what our strategy is to make sure that we are not only deeply part

of, which we are, that that we are driving this rules-based order of how asia will be structured and integrate. we have all the pieces in place. we have to sort of talk to what we think and i think once we do that we are going to be better. >> i agree with all that about in theory the strategy was designed to incentivize a growing group of the asia-pacific economies to join this updated rules-based system and it's actually worked in the sense that it started with the five countries and it is now 12. when japan joined, china and immediately took an interest in had been looking at it as a form of containment or exclusion.

when japan joined the china understood that this was a strategy to draw china and others into this global rules-based order and the reason i say that is that while i agree that we need a broad framework the reason it's so important is that it is designed to pull people into this higher standard system so it is absolutely critical as a trade and broad economic strategy. >> can you give a context on why that is and of the administration thinking given that they invested a lot of time and putting a lot of emphasis having obama invited in the particular build and relationship with him?

>> one of the flaws of the pivot has been a failure to assess the nature of china's behavior in asia and i think that there have been different views in the administration. until recently there was a strong view that much of china's assertive behavior. by the philippines are by japan, vietnam, provoking china. there's been another view which is that this is in fact part of the chinese strategy to assert more and more control. to do so first by denying and complicating the u.s. access and

then asserting the control my sense is that the center of gravity in the administration to understand the shifting in that view part of the reason is because as i said earlier, aging isn't adjusting or calibrating as the country's pushback. part of it is that she has a history, tradition from his father from his time as a staffer. in the sense that he's interested that he sees as the forces of the economic overtime and there are views in asia

across asia i've heard this in japan and elsewhere they are seeing a certain distraction and weakness and a window of opportunity before they get hillary clinton or the republic republican 2017 is good to be harder line. that's hard to prove that it's been striking that i've heard of that hypothesis in a number of asian capitals so you take your pick and the bottom line is growing that there's going to be more discussion and tension with china. but there will be the time when there will be a going on in other parts of the world.

i thought that maybe i heard a little discrepancy that michael talked about and then matthew talked about being quite close so i'm wondering where that is and actually. influencing whether or not the president gets the tpa. >> frosty but close is the way to to predict. these negotiations are very hard and complex. you get the countries in the different levels of development and views on these issues in different capacities and you have a lot of baggage on trade

and relation that have to be cut through to get this done and then there are personal issues. so all of that is leading to a strange set of talks including the bilateral ones between the u.s. and japan but japan that both the u.s. and japan and the other countries all have a very strong interest in getting it done and i think that ultimately cutting through the attentions were feelings people have in terms of interests everybody wants to get this done and certainly the u.s. and japan want to and they are close and i think that the gas are well understood by both sides it is just a question of the final political impetus behind them to get it done and that leads to the second part of the question which i think is the real obstacle and i know that in practice the lack of authority has made it more difficult for the u.s. and japan to reach this

agreement and its time to move and we are encouraged by the early indications as i said if both the republican leadership of the republican leadership and the president himself that they are ready to work on moving forward the tpa and i think that must have been. as a technical matter it is going to have to be passed if only five minutes before it's put in front of the congress because they can't be the gold and diamond and it has to happen. the sooner the better. >> i heard from the ministers at the and the trade negotiators this is the worst dynamic that might form and the added minister can't stand each other and the tension in the room is probable and i said like every other trade agreements before we finish it so in that sense it is more of the same. but the tpa is blocking this

because the government that has a bigger economic is nevertheless stuck in turn only because of questions about whether the president can deliver the congress. that is based on the history of how we have done these deals and on their observations of how things have gone in the congress for the last six years. so the hope on friday may turn that around and if it doesn't we will be stuck 5 yards from the end zone. >> it is always noisy so i am encouraged when i hear the stories of tension and noise because it shows the two sides are getting close to the difficult political compromises that they are going to have to make and so i think that it is consistent.

they have them sign up already and according to the recent reports. how likely is the united states position because they have already gained a lot of support. i don't know what circumstances or conditions might the u.s. consider to join it. >> that it is possible as a matter of the administration policy whether it is this administration or another future administration. and i might even say that it is likely at this institution gets up and running. but as a practical matter let me

just be clear that united states cannot join in the near-term as long as the congress is not willing to do the things it needs to do to enable that. if they cannot pass the reform which is a relatively minor change are they going to approve the multi-billion-dollar appropriations in the chinese lead bank. i think that like the united states on a korea, australia have their own in japan about the way this institution was launched there are a number of questions about the governance structure of the shares in that institution are going to be divided up and in particular how the operational lending standards are going to be sacked. will there be an environmental standards and is there going to be open for cure meant so that anybody that gets one of these loans can buy the products and

services from anyone or will there be a favoritism for certain suppliers so there are a bunch of questions like that that are legitimate questions that the countries thinking about joining the institutions need to work through with china and i think the concerns that have raised the needle in china have realized that some of these issues need to address them themselves to make sure that this institution can work effectively but they also have to convince people that they need to verify how the governance and operational questions are going to be followed through. i'm not sure whether they are going to join. there is an argument in both countries that would enable them to work in the bank that there is also an argument that once you are in.

they are 37% of chinese capital as the target, so it's thing to be hard for any other participant to change things when they are in. >> time for one more. let's go right here. >> is it going to be anything like the last summit? >> not much came out of that, so it was the bilateral investment treaty. in the lead alone and the lead alone completion of the administration negotiators are focused but i think they are probably right, so the secretary

previewed an agreement on the co2 emissions into the environment there's the possibility on the military to military transparency for example and some people exchange things like that. but i do not expect some large framing agreement on the relations. the administration tried that in 2009 and issued a statement in hu jintao and unraveled because it was incredible. the new model of the power relations, which sort of was the 2012, 2013 effort to do that again.

the president is going to be weary of some efforts to reproduce the communiqués that have to speak out to try to find some positive examples of cooperation. you will have the parallel narratives that do not quite square out and that's probably okay for now. >> i want to thank everybody for coming today. this briefing will be posted online this afternoon. you will get an advanced notice. thanks very much. plus the

[inaudible conversations] he said said of the house will vote again to repeal the so-called obamacare legislation to talk about obamacare. how do we walk this down without getting back into that addition of the common core and we try to tweak them?

>> obamacare is hurting the middle-class families and it's hurting the ability for the employers to create more jobs. at some point we will move to reveal obama with commonsense reforms and the doctor patient relationship. i know in the house that will pass. there are bipartisan bills that have passed the house and the senate that would in fact make changes to obamacare and others have a bipartisan majority in the house and the senate for repealing the medical device checks three i think there's a bipartisan majority in the house and the house and the senate for getting rid of the ipod, the payment advisory board credit

rationing board and of the rationing board and obamacare. how about the individual mandate we may not be able to get everything that we want but it doesn't mean we shouldn't try to get what we can. does it pull the congress back into the 60s or 70s in the role call votes? >> there are bipartisan majorities in the house and the senate to take these issues out of obamacare biagini to put them on the president's desk and let him choose. >> the student can competition is underway (-open-paren zero and high school students to create a five to seven minute documentary on the three branches and you showing how the policy, the law or the action by the executive legislation or the judicial branch of the

government has affected you or your community. there's 200 cash prizes totaling $100,000. the list of the roles and how to get started go to student cam.org. a discussion on the challenges on the subsidy for the federally run health care exchanges. speakers include attorneys of care experts and the attorney general. as you talk he talked about the lawsuits against health care law this is part of a forum hosted by the cato institute. it's about two hours.

>> good morning and welcome to this conference. imb executive vice president of the cato institute. appreciate having you here. i know there are more people that are going to be coming in but we will try to stay on time today. the subject of our conference today is this in a democracy under the rule of law does the executive branch have the power to implement laws the way the president with peter that he had been written or is the executive bound by the law the same way that you all are before the lawsuits were talking about today about the patient protection and affordable care act were obamacare but they are not lawsuits about obamacare. they are lawsuits about the rule of law. back in 2011 the irs quietly

implemented, quietly reversed the interpretation of the crucial aspect of the ppaca that would implement the health insurance subsidies and penalties on employers and individuals that failed to purchase coverage even in states that did not establish a so-called off insurance exchange. michael cannon, one of our scholars and professor jonathan who will be speaking later today were the first to blow the whistle on this problem. they pointed out that it only authorizes those taxes and those subsidies in a state if the state establishes an exchange. they persisted and it's been spending billions of dollars and subjecting tens of millions of employers and individuals to penalties that are not permitted by the aca, not authorized by an act of congress. as you might imagine the people

subjected to those taxes don't like that and that's why they filed four lawsuits in burwell and indiana irs. rather than challenging the aca the plaintiffs are claiming that the executive branch of the government is not implementing the law. they are asking the courts to force them to do so. despite the fact that the president has come under bipartisan criticism for the unilaterally rewrite in parts of his health care law a lot of people thought that these lawsuits were crazy. that is until someone unearthed this video of health economist jonathan gruber who is hailed as one of the architects of the aca

sorry i talked a little too fast. jonathan as many of you know was a key architect of governor mitt romney's health care plan which was itself sort of an architect of president obama's health care plan and jonathan gruber was discovered halfway through the discussion making his point about the aca.

>> that means citizens don't get their tax credits. so there is a guy that knows more about baseball than anybody else does and he says if you are a state and you don't set up an exchange that means your citizens don't get their tax credits. the fact that two out of three standing opinions issued by federal courts in these cases cited against the government didn't hurt changing peoples minds about the viability of the lawsuits either. this conference is timely. tomorrow the court will meet to decide whether to take up one of the lawsuits. the two were filed by the state attorneys general and we are delighted to have both of them with us today and in just a moment we will be hearing from the indiana attorney general and at lunch we would hear from the

oklahoma attorney general scott pruett who was the first to challenge the irs in court and we will have a panel of scholars debating the legal merits of the case is in another debating the impact this issue is having it could have on healthcare reform. we are proud of the role the cato institute has played in this and other areas to make the presidents of both parties respect the rule of law so it is my honor to introduce the opening keynote speaker. greg became the fourth person and the second general to file a legal challenge to the irs regulation in indiana and irs. public school systems complained of school systems complained they've had to go many jobs and reduce the hours of the noncertified support staff including the service staff and

instructional assistants to fewer than 30 hours a week because the irs is not subjecting them to the employer mandate. even though the statute itself says they are exempt. i did create one school system to make sure that it's part-time employees are not working too much. greg zeller has been indiana's 42nd attorney general since 2008 and prior to the state government committee spent ten years as an assistant to the senator and vice president and first in the senate office than in the office of the vice president. now in addition to being the attorney general he also teaches constitutional law.

>> thank you for hosting this. the lead-in took away some of what i was going to point out. let me incorporate things as part of my own lead-in. i am almost sorry that you mentioned by ten years in the federal government with the senator and vice president dan quayle. the federal government is not a well loved institution and the congress even worse. so i don't know. i guess it was kind of a dean i. it wasn't your attorney general. but i think i have resolved my checkered past by suing the federal government a number of times and that is very popular in the state of indiana.