Top world leaders meet from Thursday (Friday in Manila) to try to save their cherished free trade accords from feared extinction under US President-elect Donald Trump.
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The US president-elect is not at the summit but he looms large over the meeting of APEC, a free-trade club founded in 1989 that represents almost 40 percent of the world’s population and almost 60 percent of the global economy.
But Mr Turnbull is optimistic Mr Trump might have a change of heart.
Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe met with President-elect Trump in NY en route to the APEC meeting.
The Peruvian leader cited the U.S. election, though he did not specifically mention President-elect Donald Trump, who pledged to overhaul USA trade policy and tear up trade agreements such as NAFTA or the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP.
However, some economic analysts don’t think Trump can deliver. “But they are going to be anxious”.
Killing the deal would be a blow to agriculture trade, many industries stood to benefit from new access. It was established three decades ago to accelerate economic growth by removing trade barriers and helping integrate global supply chains.
An economic deal encumbered with excessive expectations can easily break. “We should firmly pursue FTAAP”, he said.
Manufacturing has been declining in the USA since the 1950s and today represents less than 10 percent of employment. He has promised to bring those jobs back.
Common sense teaches that brisk free trade activities can help incubate economic prosperity and higher living standards with low costs.
“I mean it wasn’t that many weeks ago that Donald Trump didn’t have terribly nice things to say about Mitt Romney and Mitt Romney didn’t have very nice things to say about Donald Trump”.
The unratified trade deal between the United States and 11 other Pacific Rim nations, including Singapore, Malaysia and Vietnam, was ostensibly created to deepen economic ties between signatories, cutting tariffs and fostering trade.
“If such measures materialize, trade tensions would certainly increase, with trade war a possible worst case scenario”, the Institute of International Finance said in a report.
“At the moment with the fiscal stimulus, if the USA economy is stronger that will obviously benefit global demand in Chinese exports”.
He said in the past the consistent stance at Apec had been that free trade was good and that free trade across the region was the big goal, ultimately through an over-arching Free Trade Area of Asia-Pacific (FTAAP).
“From New Zealand’s point of view we obviously would prefer the us involved because it is the largest place of consumption”.
With the deal on ice, members will also be looking to promote a proposed Free Trade Area of the Asia Pacific – which could include all APEC states – and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership – a 16-member deal covering south- east Asia.
It was a sharp contrast to the same newspaper’s editorial the day before, which baldly warned the incoming president not to follow through on campaign-trail promises to levy steep tariffs on Chinese-made goods or Beijing would take a “tit-for-tat approach” and target United States autos, aircraft, soybeans, and iPhones.
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“The second option is somewhere along the line there is some cosmetic change to TPP that allows Donald Trump as President to say: ‘Look it was a awful deal before but because of these changes now it’s a good one and I’ll sign up to it.’ A name change or something, something different”. “The time is now to finally approve this historic agreement”.
