APEC free trade marks U.S. trade policy milestone+

APEC free trade marks U.S. trade policy milestone+

By Antonio Kamiya

WASHINGTON (Kyodo): Architects of U.S. trade policy have
reasons to cheer when leaders of the 18 Asia-Pacific nations and
territories meet in Bogor, Indonesia, on Nov. 15 for the second
Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum summit.

There, by most accounts, the APEC leaders are likely to commit
themselves to removing all major trade barriers in the region by
a certain target date.

Such a political commitment, however vague and tentative it
might be, marks yet another milestone in the U.S.
administration's carefully orchestrated design to refashion the
global trading system to match its own image.

That strategy, developed in the 1980s but hammered home with
great vigor under the Clinton administration, takes on a
multilayered approach that has engaged Washington on several
fronts -- global, regional and bilateral.

Last April, after eight years of negotiations, the United
States clinched a global trade pact, which for the first time put
two major trade sectors where the U.S. is strongest -- services
industry and farming -- into trade rules under the GATT system.

The U.S. believes a liberalized, global trade regime will
inject as much as 1 trillion dollars into the U.S. economy over a
10-year period.

Regionally, the U.S. has consolidated its position as the
favored trader in the Western hemisphere through the North
American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with Mexico and Canada, a
pact the U.S. clearly wants extended to other Latin American
countries south of Mexico.

That pan-American spirit is expected to take another boost
when President Bill Clinton returns from Asia and joins leaders
of the American continent for a Florida summit of the Americas
set for early December.

Washington has also pursued trade goals on a nation-to-nation
basis.

Taking advantage of the U.S. position as the richest, biggest
single market in the world, the Clinton administration has
strong-armed Japan, China and other countries deemed by the U.S.
as "unfair" traders into accepting U.S. ways of doing things.

And turning APEC into a vehicle for building "a community of
Asia-Pacific economies" -- the U.S.-inspired goal APEC leaders
accepted in Seattle a year ago -- reflects the system-building
process Clinton's economic team has pursued in furthering global
U.S. trade interests.

"We view APEC as the new regional economic architecture for
the Asia-Pacific region and for our relationships with Asia,"
says Assistant U.S. Trade Representative Nancy Adams in a message
the Clinton administration has been trumpeting in the run-up to
the Bogor summit.

U.S. economic stakes in Asia-Pacific are high, judging by the
potential of the East Asian markets, home to the fast-growing
economies in the world.

Last year, U.S. goods sold to Pacific Rim countries outside
North America totaled US$ 130 billion, which was 20 percent
greater than U.S. exports to Europe.

More importantly, the fast Asian economies have been sucking
in U.S.-made goods at a pace unparalleled elsewhere.

According to Commerce Department figures, U.S. merchandise
exports to Pacific Rim countries grew 12.7 percent this year --
almost twice the pace of growth for U.S. exports to the rest of
the world.

And U.S. economists believe American businesses can do much
better in Asia, once trade barriers fall.

According to some U.S. economists, the trade liberalization
process -- the main agenda at the APEC summit in Bogor -- is
primarily a job cut for Asian member countries.

"Given the fact that all of the countries in the region,
outside North America in particular, have lots of trade
barriers... very little would actually be required from the
United States," said U.S. economist Fred Bergsten, chairman of a
panel of trade experts from APEC countries that has proposed
achieving free trade in the region between 2010 and 2020.

"So, trade liberalization, or particularly moving to totally
free trade in the region, means enormous competitive gain to the
United States," Bergsten recently told a trade forum in
Washington.

Bergsten, who heads an influential economic think tank in
Washington, argues that the huge size of the U.S. market is bound
to draw Asian countries to the U.S.

"Almost all of the Asian countries, despite diversification of
their trade pattern, still depend on the U.S. market for
something like a quarter to a third of all of their export
earnings. Therefore, continued access to the U.S. is of critical
importance to them," he said.