The Philippines in Argentina's agenda towards East Asia: Chanllenges and opportunities for intra-Asian diversification (2008-2017)

The Philippines emerge in the Far East as one of Argentina's recent non-traditional (both commercial and political) partners. In this article, our general objective is to analyze Argentina's foreign policy and trade relations with the Philippines between 2008 and the present. Specifically we will focus on: 1) Analyzing the political and strategic actions taken by Argentina, 2) Identifying scientific-academic initiatives with governmental and non-governmental participation in such period, and 3) Describing and analyzing the flow of commercial exchanges in terms of amounts and composition. Given that the Philippines is lacks priority in the Argentine foreign agenda, we seek to understand how these approaching actions are rather part of an impulse-led foreign policy than a clear and deliberated strategy of political and economic rapprochement. We arrive at the conclusion that the Philippines still occupies a peripheral position in Argentina's foreign insertion policy, despite being part of the East Asian region, a neuralgic area in the commercial and political agenda of the country.