Julius Caesar Parrenas, PhD
Senior Advisory Fellow, Institute for International Monetary Affairs (IIMA)1
posted from: http://www.iima.or.jp/pdf/newsletter2010/NLNo_37_e.pdf
The recent G20 and APEC meetings in Seoul and Yokohama underscored the importance of structural reforms. While G20 leaders struggled over the way forward to achieve sustained global economic recovery, APEC leaders went ahead to launch work toward a Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific (FTAAP), possibly through the expansion of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). Embedded in the G20 and APEC leaders’ statements are references to a key issue that will influence the success of current efforts to sustain global recovery and advance free trade.
Annexed to the G20 statement is a document entitled the “Seoul Development Consensus for Shared Growth,” which laid out the framework for future work on “infrastructure, private investment and job creation, human resource development, trade, financial inclusion, growth with resilience, food security, domestic resource mobilization and knowledge-sharing.” The APEC statement referred to a strategy for achieving high-quality growth that is balanced, inclusive, sustainable, innovative and secure, described in detail in a separate document entitled “The APEC Leaders’ Growth Strategy.”
At the heart of this growth strategy is a renewed push for greater balance between domestic and external demand within economies, which is in turn key to addressing huge trade imbalances that have significantly contributed both to the current malaise afflicting the global economy and growing frictions over trade-related issues. This growth strategy hinges on structural reforms to address deep-seated problems that have emerged in the course of one of the longest periods of strong economic performance the world has ever seen. Read more…
Categories: Finance, Infrastructure, Macroeconomics, Regional Cooperation, Trade and Investment, Uncategorized Tags: APEC, FTAAP, G20, JC Parrenas, structural reform, TPP
APEC 2011: Can the US deliver?
Andrew Elek, ANU and member of AUSPECC
This article is cross-posted from the East Asia Forum website
The most important objective of international economic cooperation in 2011 is to conclude the Doha Round. The United States has the influence to do that if it is prepared to show political initiative and have realistic expectations of others.
The APEC group can also provide leadership within the G20 to tackle global problems. APEC’s Committee on Trade and Investment (CTI) can begin to set out a strategy on how the WTO might operate beyond the Doha Round. Bringing the WTO up to date with the 21st century world of international commerce is an essential dimension of cooperation to narrow development gaps. Read more…
Ippei Yamazawa
Professor Emeritus, Hitotsubashi University, Japan
2010 APEC Yokohama was completed three weeks ago with three major achievements, first the mid-term assessment of its Bogor target, second a concrete direction toward Free trade Area for the Asia-Pacific (FTAAP), and third APEC’s growth strategy. The first two give us a future prospect for APEC’s main activity of Trade Investment Liberalization and Facilitation (TILF), while the last packages its new initiatives undertaken for the past decade in order to combat with changing economic environment in the region. Discussion has so far focused on TPP as a possible route to FTAAP but others seem to be missed since the Yokohama meetings. This short essay aims to discuss both the first agenda and continued TILF of the second. Read more…
Yuen Pau Woo
President and CEO, Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada
From: http://www.asiapacific.ca/editorials/presidents-view
Prime Minister Harper and three of his senior cabinet ministers spent much of the last week at two major international gatherings in Asia. The Seoul G20 meeting on 11-12 November was followed by the annual APEC Leaders’ Summit in Yokohama. The close proximity of these two meetings and their overlapping mandates raise important questions about the rapidly changing structure of global governance and Canada’s place in it. In light of Ottawa’s recent failure to secure a seat on the United Nations Security Council, the issue of Canada’s place in regional and global groupings has come into sharper focus.
Read more…
Peter A. Petri
Brandeis University, Senior Fellow at the East-West Center, and member of the US Asia Pacific Council
This article appeared in Nihon Keizai Shimbun, November 8, 2010 (in Japanese)
The intense debate in the Democratic Party of Japan—on whether Japan should join the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade negotiations, an initiative spanning nine countries on both sides of the Pacific, including the United States—has far-reaching implications not just for Japan but for the region and the world.
Many of us in the United States would warmly welcome a positive Japanese decision. By joining the TPP effort, Japan would reenergize the vision of a truly integrated Asia-Pacific economy, as proposed by the leaders of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum in Bogor, Indonesia in 1994.
That beautiful, historic vision remains compelling: it’s hard to imagine a peaceful, prosperous world without a vibrant Asia-Pacific economy at its center. Yet, as leaders gather in Yokohama for the APEC summit this month, economic cooperation in the Pacific is more troubled than it has been for years.
Read more…
Christopher Findlay
University of Adelaide & Vice-Chair AUSPECC
This article is cross-posted from the East Asia Forum website
Japanese politicians are still debating whether Japan should join the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). TPP members are not allowed exclusions. Agriculture is the issue, specifically the domestic political constraints imposed by protection of that sector in Japan. At the same time, the business sector is pushing hard to join.
The TPP builds on the Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership Agreement which Brunei Darussalam, Chile, New Zealand and Singapore set up in 2006. The TPP negotiating group now includes those four plus Australia, the US, Peru, Vietnam and Malaysia. The Japanese debate brought the TPP back to the headlines and highlighted the questions about the value of the preferential route to trade and domestic reform.
Read more…
Senator Daniel Inoye
Chair, U.S. Senate Appropriation Committee
APEC Promotes Stability in the Asia-Pacific
YOKOHAMA, JAPAN (Nov. 12, 2010) – Speaking yesterday at the 2010 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting in Yokohama, Japan, U.S. Senate Appropriation Committee Chairman Daniel K. Inouye (D-Hawai‘i) said the meeting comes at a time when “the interdependence among the world’s economies have reached a level never seen before.”
Inouye said APEC springs from a “foundation of peace and stability [that has] made it possible for countries with a history of conflict to come together.” He also looked ahead to APEC 2011, which will be hosted by the U.S. in Honolulu, Hawai’i, next November. “We are honored by President Obama’s selection, and his confidence that we will carry out our duty as America’s host city with distinction, deference to diplomacy, and always, with the spirit of aloha,” Inouye said. “Hawai‘i’s people are the faces of APEC. We have been shaped by the history, culture and events of this region.”
Read more…
Yuen Pau Woo
President and CEO, Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada, and Coordinator, State of the Region Report
State of the Region 2010-2011
The world economy has been on a roller coaster ride since the collapse of Lehman Brothers in September 2008. A deep plunge in economic output through the greater part of 2009 was followed by a sharp upturn, only to settle now into what can be described as a period of great uncertainty. Recovery in the US and Europe has been spotty, and the risk of another financial crisis remains present. Contrasting policy responses across the Atlantic further complicate the outlook, and underscore the differences among leading nations not only in prognosis but also in the type and degree of international coordination that is needed for sustained recovery.
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Preamble
Recognizing the access to adequate food sources as a fundamental requirement for human security and national security, we, the 2010 PECC Youth Delegation have compiled the following report in the hope that it may inform discussions within PECC in regards to the issue of food security.
Introduction
Recent food price hikes have drawn the attention of the world’s policy-makers and news media to food security. But what is “food security” and how can it be measured? For the purpose of this report we have adopted the definition of food security, as defined in the UN Food and Agriculture Organization’s 1996 Declaration on World Food Security:
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 Hadi Soeastro talking at the USAPC Annual Washington Conference Dr Hadi Soesastro, founding member of PECC, Executive Director of the Indonesian PECC committee (INCPEC) and international chair of the Pacific Trade and Development Forum (PAFTAD) passed away on 4 May.
Pak Hadi, as he was fondly called by Indonesians and others alike was one of the intellectual founders of regionalism in Southeast Asia and the broader Asia-Pacific.
Although he made his mark on the world as one of the region’s leading economists, Pak Hadi was a trained engineer, which perhaps explains his ability to construct his arguments and ideas that have stood the test of time.
His interests in PECC have been broad ranging from trade and investment in the region to climate change. The impact his work had on ASEAN, APEC and PECC is immeasurable. Not only because he was respected by decision-makers he worked with throughout the region but all the more so because of the generation of leaders he inspired and will continue to inspire through his writing.
Read more…
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