Bridges Weekly Trade News Digest • Volume 13 • Number 40 • 18th November 2009
APEC Leaders Call for Doha Deal, Deeper Regional Integration
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Leaders of the 21 countries of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum tackled the WTO’s Doha Round of trade talks and the future of a potential Pacific-wide trade pact at a three-day summit in Singapore last week.
On the Doha Round, the leaders - whose economies account for roughly half of global trade — agreed that a strong political push was critical to injecting momentum into the global trade talks, and they pledged their commitment to completing the round by late 2010.
Trade ministers will gather at the WTO’s headquarters in Geneva later this month to evaluate progress in the Round, which celebrated its eighth birthday last week. Trade officials have been frustrated with the slow pace of progress in the talks, which have shown little movement despite an intensive negotiating schedule over the past few months.
Regional trade integration
Turning to regional integration, the APEC leaders vowed to move ahead on a proposed Free-Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific (FTAAP), a deal that would aim to deepen economic ties among the countries along the Pacific Rim.
Several leaders stressed that negotiations toward a Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership Agreement (TPP), originally set in motion by the United States under the Bush administration (see Bridges Weekly, 25 September 2008, http://ictsd.org/i/news/bridgesweekly/29777/) could serve as a possible way to move forward with the FTA.
Speaking in Tokyo ahead of the APEC meeting, US President Barack Obama seemed to support such a push forward in the TPP talks. The US “will … be engaging with the Trans Pacific partnership countries with the goal of shaping a regional agreement that will have broad-based membership and the high standards worthy of a 21st-century trade agreement,” he said.
Obama’s statement was welcomed by leaders in the US Senate Finance Committee.
“The world has been waiting for the United States to reassert its leadership on trade, and today’s announcement is an important first step,” Charles Grassley, top Republican of the US Senate’s Finance Committee said. “If we can reach an agreement, it will create new opportunities for US exporters and help strengthen our position in the Asia-Pacific region,” he added.
But some US stakeholders have yet to be convinced of the benefits of the TPP. Farmers and ranchers fear a surge of meat and dairy imports from New Zealand, while textile producers are concerned about increased competition from Vietnamese imports. Officials in Washington have indicated that they are sensitive to such stakeholders’ apprehension.
“Our intent is to engage with [TPP partners] to see whether we can shape that initiative into one that is comprehensive and a very high standard and could serve as a platform for further trade liberalisation and regional integration in the region,” Michael Froman, Washington’s Deputy National Security Advisor for Economic Affairs, said at a news conference. “We’ll begin those discussions with the current and potential future members of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and see whether this is something that could prove to be an important platform going forward.”
The proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership would include seven countries besides the US: Australia, Brunei, Chile, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam.
The APEC leaders echoed their previous vows to resist trade protectionism, and called for both structural reforms within markets as well as deeper regional integration, “to facilitate a more seamless flow of goods and services, and business travellers throughout the Asia-Pacific.”
The main proposal for structural reform discussed at the meeting was the Ease of Doing Business Act, which aims to reduce the costs, time, and bureaucracy of trade transactions by 25 percent by 2015. Some leaders also suggested enhancing cross-border transportation linkages, including land, sea, and air transport.
Climate and Trade
On climate change, the leaders acknowledged that “efforts to address climate change must be consistent with our international trade obligations,” and that global reduction of greenhouse gases will require both financial assistance and technology transfer to developing countries.
The leaders upheld as “a key thrust in APEC’s sustainable growth agenda,” the forum’s work programme on Environmental Goods and Services (EGS), an initiative that aims to increase the utilisation and dissemination of clean energy technologies, reduce existing barriers to trade and investment in EGS, and enhance economies’ abilities to develop their EGS sectors. The Doha negotiations have also focused on liberalising trade and investment in EGS, but have so far failed to reach concrete agreements.
“We will explore ways to reduce barriers to trade and investment in environmental goods and services (EGS) and will refrain from introducing new barriers to trade in EGS,” the APEC leaders said in the statement.
APEC consists of 21 member states: Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Mexico, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Peru, the Philippines, Russia, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, and the US.
More information
The APEC leaders’ statement is available here: http://ictsd.org/downloads/2009/11/apec-leaders-statement.pdf
ICTSD reporting.
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