Steep road to Osaka
Steep road to Osaka
Issues that the Bogor APEC forum brushed over may come back
to haunt Asia-Pacific leaders when they meet in Japan later this
year. Martin Khor reports for Inter Press Service.
PENANG, Malaysia: The next meeting of the Asia-Pacific
Economic Cooperation forum is still seven months away, but
member-countries are already scrambling to prepare for it.
This is because the specifics of a free trade plan struck in
Bogor, Indonesia last November are expected to be hammered out at
this year's meeting in Osaka, and analysts predict clashes
between one side led by the United States and the other headed by
Malaysia.
Part of the problem is that most APEC economies have hardly
had the time to do the sophisticated task of calculating the
pluses and minuses of trade liberalization -- especially since
the `region' within which this process will take place includes
developed economies such as that of Japan and the United States.
And now there are rising fears among analysts and activists in
APEC developing economies that there would be moves in Osaka to
extend `free trade' to `free trade area', and `non-binding'
commitment to `legally binding' agreement.
APEC groups together Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan,
China, Malaysia, Indonesia, Brunei, Singapore, the Philippines,
Thailand, Mexico, Chile, Papua New Guinea, Australia, New Zealand
the United States and Canada.
Last November, the leaders of the 18 APEC member economies
meeting in Bogor adopted a declaration calling for the
establishment of free trade among themselves by the year 2010 for
developed nations and 2020 for developing countries.
At the meeting, the U.S. played the most active role in
pushing for a free trade area to be set up, and for
liberalization of trade, services and investments.
But some of the developing countries led by Malaysia were
alarmed by the rapid rate at which APEC was being
institutionalized and being moved along the road toward a free
trade area.
At Malaysia's insistence, the Bogor Declaration included an
annex that said the target dates for liberalization were not
legally binding. Kuala Lumpur has argued that trade
liberalization should be done unilaterally, commensurate with
each country's development level and capacity.
In the last few months, however, the U.S. has proved to be as
tenacious as Malaysia regarding its stance on where APEC should
be headed.
At a WorldNet dialogue session in February in Kuala Lumpur,
the U.S. coordinator for APEC, Sandra Kristoff, made it clear her
country will push hard for the acceptance of the liberalization
datelines.
She said Washington's understanding of the Bogor Declaration
was that the forthcoming Osaka meeting should have an ambitious
and bold action agenda to speedily launch the free trade plan.
"We have to be bold," Kristoff said. "While we agree that the
agenda for trade liberalization must be balanced, we cannot
mistake balance with timidness. (The year) 2010 is our goal. Some
nations may need longer and can take until 2020."
She added that this 15-25 year period allowed "plenty of room
for pragmatism".
But to many analysts, the pace of APEC's progression itself
has been astonishing. Initiated by Australia, the grouping
started in the late 1980s supposedly as an informal and
unstructured gathering of economies.
By 1993, leaders of the member-economies gathered in Seattle
for the forum's first meeting. Months after, a report by APEC's
Eminent Persons Group had a proposal for a free trade area in the
Asia-Pacific.
The Bogor Declaration deliberately left out details due to the
reservations of countries like Malaysia and China.
The implications for the developing economies within APEC are
enormous, especially since the Uruguay Round of the General
Agreement of Tariffs and Trade (GATT) expanded the concept of
free trade to include not only trade in manufactures, but also in
agriculture and services.
It now also covers the granting of intellectual property
protection to transnational companies, a measure that many
activists say is protectionist and goes counter to the principle
of liberalization.
Analysts point out that countries like the U.S. have
instruments that they use to attain extra trade concessions.
One example of these measures is the so-called Super 301 that
the U.S. has either applied or threatened to use on countries
such as China, Thailand, India, Brazil and even Japan, all of
which Washington deemed to have inadequately complied with the
requirements of U.S. firms.
Indeed, there lurks a suspicion that APEC may be used to get
Asian countries to make concessions in trade, services,
investments and intellectual property, beyond those made through
the Uruguay Round.
Some Asian governments are also wary that Washington is keen
to get APEC off the ground as a regional free trade arrangement
and be a counterweight to the European Union, which is currently
the largest and most powerful regional economic bloc.
Some analysts say the APEC process can be seen as parallel to
how Washington brought the Americas into its orbit.
First, there was the North American Free Trade Agreement
(NAFTA). This led to a larger liberalization process involving
almost all South American countries, whose leaders attended a
meeting with U.S. President Bill Clinton at Miami last December.
APEC, experts argue, would bring the Asia-Pacific countries
concerned closer to the U.S. circuit, thus giving U.S. firms a
headstart over Europe.
But the U.S. scoffs at such charges, and Kristoff during the
WorldNet dialogue denied that the United States was trying to
push APEC to move faster than any of its members could handle.
She told a panel that included representatives from Malaysia,
Japan and South Korea: "Nothing in the U.S. posture suggests we
are trying to take NAFTA and extending it westward across the
Pacific."
-- IPS