Because debate is healthy, I'm going to add a different perspective to ASEAN. It's more of a security perspective, not an economic perspective.
ASEAN is only as good as its weakest partner from a security perspective, and you have some pretty heavily compromised members of ASEAN. Cambodia has basically helped China to set up a base there.
I've had French diplomats describe it to me as the ASEAN fog: You go there, you don't quite know what's going on and you can't really see a future or a path forward. That doesn't mean not to go. It just means that if we have limited resources, maybe don't think that some grand strategy is going to come out of spending a lot of time sitting around ASEAN. I would argue the same thing with the Pacific Islands Forum.
Chinese penetration, infiltration and influence operations are so advanced across the region. I personally think it makes sense to make sure you do—as well as everything else—a ground-up assessment. Talk and listen to people on the ground, making sure that you know what's actually going on. The bureaucrats that end up getting sent to ASEAN or the PIF are not necessarily representative of either the national governments or the internal politics and dynamics that are shaping the realities of those countries.