WASHINGTON—Top U.S. trade and commerce officials are meeting this week with their counterparts in Japan, South Korea and India—but not China—as the Biden administration seeks to build stronger economic ties with friendly nations in Asia.

U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai and Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo have a series of meetings to discuss issues from supply-chain resilience to the digital economy to pandemic response.

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WASHINGTON—Top U.S. trade and commerce officials are meeting this week with their counterparts in Japan, South Korea and India—but not China—as the Biden administration seeks to build stronger economic ties with friendly nations in Asia.

U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai and Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo have a series of meetings to discuss issues from supply-chain resilience to the digital economy to pandemic response.

Such efforts reflect President Biden’s pledge to work more closely with allies and friendly nations to better confront challenges stemming from China’s expanding economic influence in the region.

The visits come after the administration’s economic officials spent much of this year focusing on smoothing over ties with Europe. Those efforts resulted in easing tensions over Trump-era steel and aluminum tariffs, aircraft subsidies and digital services taxes, paving the way for new joint initiatives.

“There has been a lot of focus on domestic issues…and in trying to resolve issues with Europe,” said Wendy Cutler, vice president at the Asia Society Policy Institute and a former official at the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative.

“Now the administration is ready to engage with Asia and give Asia the kind of attention that it has been talking about on the economic front but hasn’t been able to deliver on,” she said.

In his virtual meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping Monday, Mr. Biden emphasized the need to protect American workers and industries from China’s “unfair trade and economic practices,” according to the White House. Mr. Biden also raised concerns about China’s human-rights record in areas including Xinjiang, a major producer of cotton and solar-panel ingredients which have become targets of U.S. import bans due to forced labor concerns.

President Biden met virtually with Chinese President Xi Jinping on Monday.

Photo: mandel ngan/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

A key question for the administration is how to build out its Asia trade policy without joining regional trade agreements. The challenge is growing as such pacts are gaining importance among Asia-Pacific nations including China to promote commerce and write new rules for the digital economy.

Late last year, 15 countries including China, Japan and Australia launched a broad, if shallow, free-trade agreement called the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership.

Separately, China, Taiwan and the United Kingdom, have recently applied to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, the current version of the old Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade pact of allies that the U.S. helped to design as a counterweight to China but withdrew from during the early days of the Trump administration.

Biden administration officials, as they pursue worker-centered trade policy, say they won’t sign new trade agreements while focusing on improving the domestic economy.

The U.S. wants to counter China’s influence around the world by providing everything from infrastructure to vaccines and green energy. WSJ’s Stu Woo explains how the plan, dubbed Build Back Better World, aims to compete with China’s Belt and Road Initiative. Photo composite: Daniel Orton The Wall Street Journal Interactive Edition

“There is a strong hope on the side of Japan that we will see the U.S. returning to the TPP…especially when we are seeing new applicants in the context of the expansion of the CPTPP,” Noriyuki Shikata,

Japan’s cabinet secretary for public affairs, said last week during a panel discussion hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank.

In a letter to Mr. Biden last week, 14 Republicans of the Senate Finance Committee urged the administration to re-establish leadership in trade policy in Asia, starting with negotiations for high standard rules for digital trade with allies.

The letter came days after China applied to join an emerging regional digital economy agreement which currently has Singapore, New Zealand and Chile as its members.

“Our refusal to get into the game to set the rules for trade in the Indo-Pacific encourages potential partners to move forward without us and ensures China will hold the reins of the global economy,” wrote the senators, led by Sen. Mike Crapo of Idaho, the top committee Republican.

Ms. Raimondo kicked off the administration’s Asian tour Monday in Tokyo with a series of meetings with top officials and a technology round table with business leaders.

Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, who kicked off the administration’s Asian tour Monday in Tokyo, at the White House last week.

Photo: Ken Cedeno - Pool via CNP/Zuma Press

The administration said Friday the two nations will begin talks to resolve concerns over steel and aluminum issues.

“Rebuilding alliance with our like-minded partners is essential to strengthening (the U.S.’s) global competitiveness,” Ms. Raimondo tweeted Monday with a photo of Mount Fuji peeking behind office towers. With Koichi Hagiuda, minister of economy, trade and industry, she launched the Japan-U.S. Commercial and Industrial Partnership, aimed at enhancing the “competitiveness, resilience, and security” of the two economies.

Ms. Raimondo is in Singapore on Tuesday and Wednesday for meetings with trade ministers from Australia and New Zealand, as well as with Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong of Singapore. The trip will also take her to Malaysia, a major semiconductor supplier.

Ms. Tai’s 10-day trip will include meetings with her counterparts and other stakeholders in three countries. She is scheduled to meet top Japanese officials and labor leaders Wednesday and Thursday.

In Seoul on Friday and Saturday, she will co-chair a meeting of the U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement and meet with women leaders.

In New Delhi, she will attend the U.S.-India Trade Policy Forum before returning to Washington before Thanksgiving.

Mr. Biden and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi agreed in September to reconvene the bilateral trade forum inactive since 2018. The two countries have been beefing up their security relations through a quadrilateral pact known as the Quad, an increasingly important part of Washington’s Asia defense strategy that also includes Japan and Australia.

Sanjay Kathuria, a Wilson Center fellow and senior visiting fellow at the New Delhi-based Center for Policy Research, said Indian officials are interested in signing a mini bilateral trade deal while Washington wants to focus on removing irritants, including tariffs imposed by India on American farm products in retaliation for the U.S.’s steel and aluminum levies.

“If the Quad is going to work as an economic partnership, India and the U.S. will have to find a way to have their bilateral engagement work well,” Mr. Kathuria said. “There has to be a lot more give and take on both sides.”

Write to Yuka Hayashi at yuka.hayashi@wsj.com