“The youth have been doing this for several days already, and we will not stop because we want the whole world to know just how much the Filipino people puke on the APEC”, said Charisse Bernadine Banez, the national chairperson of the League of Filipino Students activist group.
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The TPP covers Japan, Canada, Mexico, Chile, Peru, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Brunei, Vietnam and Malaysia and represents 40% of the global gross domestic product, 30% of global exports, 25% of imports and covers 793 million consumers.
Protest leader Renato Reyes told the Associated Press that over the past two decades “APEC and imperialist globalization have only benefited the rich countries while further impoverishing developing countries like the Philippines”.
The 21 leaders of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) share the same sentiment as G20 leaders in combating terrorism comprehensively as besides the loss of lives, such heinous acts have serious economic and business implications.
The leaders of the Asia Pacific Cooperation (APEC) member-economies should have seized the opportunity to take China to task for putting global trade under threat by aggressively staking its claim to the West Philippine (South China) Sea, a party-list lawmaker said on Friday.
The protesters said they opposed APEC’s free-trade agenda because it favoured big corporations, neglected the poor and cost the country enormous sums of cash to host. The deal faces significant opposition from Congress, however. She opposes the trade pact because it does not do enough to protect American workers and jobs.
He also said that there could be differences in opinions in the country’s Apec hosting, but the government is willing to engage all stakeholders in meaningful dialogue as well as consider suggestions for improvement.
Meanwhile, Abe and his wife sat next to U.S. President Obama during a banquet held on Wednesday while Park sat next to Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, drawing media attention for illustrating the closer ties between Japan and the U.S.
Yet, it is also important to maintain the balance and take care of all the countries’ interests and needs, and a feasible way would be gradually raising standards with all members’ participation, he added. He also offered veiled criticism of the U.S.-led TPP as being too restrictive and exclusionary. The USA and China are using their respective trade groupings to jockey for influence in Asia, the world’s most populous and fastest-growing region economically.
He however said this “unique path of regional cooperation” would pave the way for an Asia Pacific that has “greater openness, greater integration, and greater development”.
The Chinese leader said “with various new regional free trade arrangements cropping up, there have been worries about that potential of fragmentation”.
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Promoting the TPP has been a main goal of Obama’s trip to Asia this week. Member nations released a statement this week saying the trade pact creates a “new and compelling model for trade” that will alleviate poverty and strengthen links among their economies.
