It was at the informal ASEAN-U.S. summit in Los Cabos in 2002 that President Bush announced the Enterprise for ASEAN Initiative. The Deputy U.S. Trade Representative had earlier alerted me to it by telephone. The ASEAN Economic Ministers were similarly alerted. As Bush and his officials described it, the EAI would be the regional framework for the U.S. to negotiate free trade agreements with those ASEAN countries with which the U.S. had Trade and Investment Framework Agreements (TIFA). At that time, Singapore was close to signing a comprehensive economic agreement with the United States, Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand had TIFAs, and Brunei Darussalam was about to conclude one. Presumably, this arrangement would allow the United States to exclude certain ASEAN countries, Myanmar being under a U.S. trade and investment embargo and Cambodia being
denied, until 2004, most-favoured-nation treatment by the United States. The ASEAN Economic Ministers, however, subsequently insisted that the EAI be discussed with ASEAN as a whole and that a framework be worked out
between ASEAN as a group and the United States. Then U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick concurred, but operative agreements, including those on free trade areas, would still be negotiated between the United States
and individual ASEAN members. As of November 2005, work on an ASEAN-U.S. framework agreement had not started.