‘Quad’ diplomats express ‘grave concerns’ about economic coercion in veiled jab at China

Top diplomats from “the Quad” grouping of Japan, Australia, India and the U.S. on Saturday expressed “grave concerns” about economic coercion through export restrictions and nonmarket policies, in a veiled jab at China.

Economic security was a key feature of the talks in Atlanta, the officials’ third meeting this year, as the grouping gears up for a leaders’ summit expected to be held this month.

“They expressed grave concerns regarding economic coercion, including through arbitrary export restrictions, as well as nonmarket policies and practices that result in overcapacity to disrupt global supply chains in critical industries,” the officials said in a joint statement.

Tokyo has ramped up its criticism of Beijing’s curbs on rare earth exports critical to Japan’s economy following a fissure in ties after Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi remarked that her country could hypothetically intervene militarily in a Taiwan crisis under certain scenarios.

The officials also announced they would provide more than $85 million in aid to support trusted artificial intelligence technologies across the Indo-Pacific, while launching a new effort to identify semiconductor and AI supply-chain chokepoints “before they cause disruptions.”

But while the Quad officials reaffirmed their commitment to “a free and open Indo-Pacific” and “aligned their perspectives on the situations” in the region, “including in the East China Sea and the South China Sea,” they stopped short of explicitly naming China.

Asked about the conspicuous absence, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio told a news conference that the Quad is “not an anti-China or anti-anybody coalition,” but noted that concerning behavior and activities “are coming repetitively from one country.”

“That’s going to be obvious to everybody,” he added.  

Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi called the latest Quad meeting a “a meaningful opportunity to demonstrate the results of practical cooperation, particularly in the economic sphere.”

His remarks come as member states look to breathe life back into the Quad partnership by holding the first leaders’ meeting in more than two years during Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)-related meetings in Manila from Nov. 15 to 17.

Rubio last month said the meeting would likely be held on the ASEAN summit sidelines, noting Saturday that details will “hopefully” be announced “very soon.”

The U.S. secretary of state has been a vocal backer of the grouping, which was conceived by late Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in 2007 to bring together the four like-minded democracies as a bulwark against China’s growing ambitions in the region.

The top U.S. diplomat met his counterparts for the first time just a day after the inauguration of U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration. 

While Rubio has now held three meetings with his Quad counterparts, Trump has yet to partake in a leaders’ meeting — the last such talks took place in September 2024, when Joe Biden was U.S. president. 

While Biden revitalized the Quad, holding five online or in-person leaders’ summits, Trump has repeatedly expressed his disdain for and even animosity toward multilateral groupings while withdrawing the United States from decades of leadership on the global stage. 

His administration’s National Security Strategy, released last December, contained just a single mention of the Quad.

Instead, the U.S. president has appeared more interested in other, more headline-grabbing meetings, including bilateral summits this year with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in Beijing and Washington. 

Analysts say those meetings saw him take a more conciliatory approach to Xi than his predecessors on issues such as Taiwan and the security concerns of allies such as Japan.

Trump also raised eyebrows by saying last month that he is open to holding a trilateral summit with Xi and Russian leader Vladimir Putin focused on “denuclearization,” possibly on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Shenzhen on Nov. 18 and 19, just days after the ASEAN meetings.

A three-way meeting could help lay the groundwork for confidence-building measures on nuclear issues, but it would also trigger alarm among the United States’ Asian partners that any dealmaking among the three could weaken alliances as well as partnerships such as the Quad.

Nevertheless, any Quad leaders’ summit — even if nearly 22 months after Trump’s return to the White House — should at least partially ameliorate concerns among officials in Tokyo, Canberra and New Delhi that the grouping has atrophied under his administration.