Peru president, APEC host, warns of threats to free trade
The president of Peru has started off an Asian-Pacific trade summit with a warning about what he sees as a growing threat to global free trade
By | Associated Press – 4 hours ago
- ricky l 0 seconds ago
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- Great that TPP will still go ahead - irregardless of US response.
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US trade tsar warns scrapping TPP carries 'serious costs'
- Posted 19 Nov 2016 07:40
LIMA: US Trade Representative Michael Froman warned of "serious" strategic and economic costs from scrapping a major trans-Pacific trade deal on Friday (Nov 18), as proponents lobbied hard to overcome president-elect Donald Trump's opposition.
Acknowledging that the fate of the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement, or TPP, is now largely out of the Obama administration's hands, Froman indicated he would continue to make the case that the deal is good for America.
"We are obviously at a point in time where this is a legislative process to get TPP through and it's really up to the Congressional leadership to determine if, when and how it's going to move forward," he said. "It's a political decision for them to make."
"Our argument is that inaction poses serious costs" he added, citing a recent study suggesting failure would cost the US economy around US$94 billion in the first year alone.
Trade deals such as TPP and the 1993 North American Free Trade Agreement featured heavily in the brutal US election campaign and many see Trump's victory as a repudiation of ever-deeper commercial ties.
Neither Trump nor his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton supported TPP during the campaign.
Free-trade supporters say the deals were made a scapegoat for the social and economic disruptions caused by automation and other far more potent trends.
"Globalisation is a factor in our life, it's not going away," Froman said.
Some are still holding out a flicker of hope that pragmatism will trump the mogul's tough anti-trade rhetoric when he gets to the Oval Office.
The real estate billionaire's inexperience and seemingly divergent policy positions have led many in Washington to treat the president-elect as a blank canvas for their priorities, hoping he can be persuaded of the benefits.
Allies of the president-elect, including some in Congress and Vice President-elect Mike Pence, have voiced support for the deal.
"It's only been ten days since the election," Froman said. "Any new administration needs time to go through the transition process, appoint its people, get briefed up on the state of current policy and to make their decisions about where they want to go from here."
Some envisage the reopening of negotiations that would allow Trump to play dealmaker and claim to improve the pact.
Leaders of TPP countries are scheduled to meet in Lima, Peru on Saturday on the margins of an Asia-Pacific summit.
But some signatories are already looking at whether a Chinese-backed trade agreement might be more feasible than the Washington-led deal.
"TPP is obviously not the only game in town," Froman said. "It's a real risk that's playing out in real time."
Many believe a successful Chinese pact would strike major blow to US influence in the fast-rising region.
- AFP/de
Asia Pacific leaders urged to defend free trade after Trump's victory
- Posted 19 Nov 2016 01:42
- Updated 19 Nov 2016 06:39
LIMA: A summit of top world leaders was urged on Friday to defend free trade from rising protectionism after Donald Trump's election victory stoked fears that years of tearing down barriers to global commerce could be reversed.
Trump, who triumphed in last week's US presidential vote, successfully tapped the anger of working-class voters who feel left behind by globalisation, vowing to protect American jobs against cheap labour in countries like China and Mexico.
As a summit of the 21-member Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) group got under way, host President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski of Peru urged the region's leaders to robustly defend free trade, while the US sought to reassure worried allies.
"In the US and Britain, protectionist tendencies are taking over," Kuczynski told APEC leaders. It is fundamental that world trade grow again and that protectionism be defeated."
Trump's victory came after Britain's surprise "Brexit" vote in June to leave the European Union, adding to deep uncertainty about the post-war world order and the future of free trade.
The sentiment also exists on a far smaller scale in Peru, where several dozen protesters - including Amazon natives in indigenous headdress - gathered on Friday in Lima to condemn free trade agreements and the "capitalist beast."
Trump has notably vowed to scuttle US President Barack Obama's key trade initiative in the Asia-Pacific, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), leaving a vacuum that China - which was excluded from the deal - is keen to fill.
A delegate at ministerial meetings held on Thursday and Friday said APEC ministers had expressed concern over growing protectionism in the United States, and that the mood had been sombre.
The official, who asked not to be named, said US Trade Representative Michael Froman had sought to assure ministers that American core interests don't change from administration to administration.
'UNEQUIVOCAL MESSAGE'
Trump is not at the summit but he looms large over the meeting of APEC, a free-trade club founded in 1989 that represents nearly 40 per cent of the world's population and nearly 60 per cent of the global economy.
In a clear jab at the mogul's anti-trade stance, Kuczynski said that "anyone who wants to promote protectionism (should) read an economic history of the 1930s."
The centre-right economist urged his fellow leaders to deliver an "unequivocal message" in support of free trade.
Singapore's Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong echoed the sentiment, urging more, not less, trade in the face of "a nativist response in developed countries by those who blame globalisation for making them worse off."
The US election has left China, a country the United States once considered a threat to free-market capitalism, as the unlikely leader of the movement for open trade.
Chinese President Xi Jinping is holding a strong hand as he meets Obama and other APEC leaders this week.
"There is no doubt that if the TPP fails it will be a huge win for China, politically and economically," said Brian Jackson, a China economist at consultancy IHS Global Insight.
Even long-time US allies in the Asia-Pacific region now say they are keen to get on board with Chinese-backed alternatives to TPP.
Beijing is pushing an APEC-wide Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific (FTAAP) and a 16-member Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), which includes India but not the United States.
World business leaders gathered on the sidelines of the summit bemoaned TPP's "grim prospects" and urged governments to pour resources into FTAAP, said Sun Xiao, an official with the China Chamber of International Commerce.
And amid mounting criticism that globalisation has benefitted only the wealthiest, IMF chief Christine Lagarde defended trade as a major engine of growth. "We hope it continues to be - but it has to be inclusive growth," she added.
- AFP/de
US pulling back from global trade will be 'big minus': PM Lee
- Posted 19 Nov 2016 08:01
- Updated 19 Nov 2016 08:10
LIMA, Peru: The world will find ways to cope if the United States shifts towards trade protectionism, but having America out of the picture will be a “big minus”.
Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said this in a wide-ranging Q&A session at the APEC CEO Summit on Friday (Nov 18).
Asked about the possibility of US President-elect Donald Trump pulling back from free trade, Mr Lee noted that the US is the biggest and most open market in the world, and has been the “engine” pushing for free trade for many decades. And while there will still be opportunities to promote growth in Europe and Asia without the participation of the US, the world will be “missing out” on a huge opportunity.
“It’s not only missing out on the positive, but risking a very big negative in terms of destabilising the global trading and strategic system,” Mr Lee said.
To assuage people’s fear of globalisation, he said governments need to pour in investments and implement programmes that cannot be “boondoggled”, so citizens - especially the young - feel that this is the way forward.
On the other hand, Mr Lee noted China’s One Belt, One Road initiative to promote regional connectivity. He said this is the “right way” for China to engage with the world, as it connects the country to its neighbours and boosts economic integration.
But he warned that in this “new world”, there is “no country which is the middle kingdom”.
“Nowadays, however strong an economy is, not all roads will lead only there. There will be other links between countries in Asia, with America, with Europe, and China will fit into this global network,” Mr Lee said.
The Prime Minister also outlined Singapore’s plans to remain relevant and continue to be a business-friendly country.
“I’ll make two complementary, almost contradictory points. One, you must have stability. When somebody makes an investment, he’s committing to you for 20, 30, 40 years. He comes in on certain expectations. You must make it quite clear right at the start what those expectations should be, and you have to honour your word, over many terms of government,” said Mr Lee.
But he added that while regulations need to be stable, they must also keep up with the times, especially in light of disruptive innovations like Airbnb and Uber.
“We are looking for ways where you can have a sandbox, where you have a restricted environment within which people can try new things and I can try new rules. And depending on what works, then I open up the sandbox, and it becomes the new rule for the whole system,” Mr Lee said.
- CNA/de
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