Pacific Currents is a discussion forum on Asia-Pacific economic issues. We welcome submissions from all stakeholders including academics, researchers, thought-leaders, civil society, business leaders; and other policy experts. Submissions should cover issues related to economic policy and integration in the region. Articles should be written for a general audience and not technical but should have a foundation in objective policy analysis. Articles should also conform with PECC nomenclature - if you are not familiar, the editor will provide you with appropriate guidelines. Acceptance of articles is entirely at the discretion of the Editor.
Former alternate New Zealand member of the APEC Business Council.
The swirls and eddies currently sweeping across the Asia–Pacific region's geopolitical and economic landscape do not offer a promising setting for the review of any regional agency, even one as long-established, and soon to enter its fourth decade, as the institution known as 'Asia–Pacific Economic Cooperation'. APEC has recently been described as the 'premier economic forum'1 for promoting regional growth and integration and 'a global leader in addressing pressing problems'. The 21 APEC member economies, including New Zealand, are home to 40 per cent of the world's population and account for around 60 per cent of global production.
Seemingly undeterred by the regional volatility, APEC leaders have launched a major project to chart APEC's forward path and identify its place in regional economic architecture beyond 2020. The 30th anniversary will be a significant one for APEC; 2020 will be notable, too, because it was the target date which APEC set, in 1994 in the 'Bogor Goals', for full realisation throughout the region of the vision of 'free and open trade and investment'.
In my recent book on the Asian Century, I argue that Asia is sitting on a knife edge. The potential of the region to generate good and happy lives for its citizens is enormous. But the requirements of success and the risks of failure are equally enormous.
It is true of course that most Asian economies have achieved stunning development over the past decades. But despite the region's rapid rise, Asia is suffering from stunted economic development. No major Asian economy has caught up with global leaders like the US and Germany in terms of GDP per capita and living standards, and there is little likelihood of such catch-up occurring over the foreseeable future.
It is also true that China, India and Indonesia are becoming major economic and political powers. But their huge economic weight is due to their large populations, more than their levels of economic, business and technological sophistication which remain modest overall.
Back in October of 2016 when the Canada-EU Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement, (CETA) was on the cusp of closure, the negotiations hit a roadblock when the Belgian region of Wallonia blocked the necessary consensus for the EU to conclude with Canada. Chrystia Freeland, who was then the minister of international trade, walked out of the negotiations in Brussels and packed her bags to return to Canada. She lamented that "… it is now evident to me, evident to Canada, that the European Union is incapable of reaching an agreement – even with a country with European values such as Canada, even with a country as nice and as patient as Canada." A core element of her argument was that Canada and Europe shared common values, and therefore the path to an agreement should have been open. As we know, a compromise satisfied Wallonia's concerns, mainly regarding the so-called investor-state dispute settlement process which allows foreign invested companies to sue governments for alleged discriminatory practices that negatively impact their investments. Canada and the EU went on to sign the agreement, most of whose provisions came into effect on Sept. 21, 2017. The government of Canada has cranked up its communications machine and is touting CETA as "a progressive trade agreement for a strong middle class".
Canada-Japan relations are at a low ebb politically and need to be rescued by urgent and decisive action.
One of our largest trading relationships has been put at risk by the perceived snub offered to Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in Vietnam in November when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau missed a scheduled press conference intended to announce that Canada, Japan and nine other Trans-Pacific Partnership countries had reached agreement in principle on a revised trade pact. Worse still, it was Canada's last-minute case of cold feet that almost sank the agreement.
It is time for a reset to restore this important bilateral relationship. The best way to do this is to double down now to resolve the outstanding differences between Japan and Canada that are hindering conclusion of what has been relabelled the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership.
It hasn't been a good few weeks for the Trudeau government's "progressive" trade agenda.
First, the unwillingness of some countries to swallow elements of the progressive agenda was at least partially responsible for the sudden postponement of an announcement around the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) last month in Vietnam. The announcement was expected to confirm that the 11 TPP economies had reached an agreement in principle to conclude the pact.
Then an expected agreement on the start of free trade talks with China did not materialize during Justin Trudeau's Beijing visit earlier this week, blocked by Chinese objections to including "progressive elements," such as labour and gender rights, in the negotiations.
In both cases, talks have not been completely derailed, but it is fair to say the outcome is not what was expected. And in both instances this progressive agenda has been fingered as a principal cause.
During the 1990s and 2000s, international trade experienced a substantial boost from mass globalisation, resulting in a huge increase in the volume of inter-continental freight flows and yielding a bonanza for logistics service providers and freight forwarders around the world.
This globalisation frenzy was fuelled by an unprecedented combination of three key drivers in the pursuit of lowest-cost manufacturing – the out-sourcing of business activities to third parties, the off-shoring of production to low-cost countries and the un-bundling of vertically integrated manufacturing clusters into dispersed specialist activities.
Download full report from PIIE website.
Services have enabled manufacturers to take advantage of cutting edge technologies and become more productive. Services have also enabled manufacturers to grow the value of their operations from the initial stage of designing their products to the final stage of getting their products to their customers. Manufacturing has become a complex mix of many types of services, automation, and computer-driven production, with a large and growing share of value derived from the services components.
Digital technologies are becoming critical to every facet of the world economy. These digital technologies are the "digital DNA" that unleashes dazzling changes in the information, communication, and production capabilities that are transforming how the world works. We call this the information and production disruption. The IPD is rapidly altering the dynamics of firms, how markets perform, and the potential for stronger economic growth and social prosperity. Government policy makers with an eye to the future are searching for policies to leverage the best potential of these disruptions, but have yet to determine how to reconcile seemingly contradictory policy challenges. We offer recommendations for global economic governance that provide a new foundation for problem solving to cope with messy problems that inevitably accompany large-scale change. Despite the current political headwinds we show how trade policy can be the key platform for enabling an extensive complementary set of regulatory and nongovernmental actions to govern the IPD productively.
Scholars, government officials, and corporate executives have acknowledged to us that the disruption is occurring but that it is difficult to grasp because it is so multifaceted. This diffuseness makes it hard to distill the first priorities necessary for governance reform. We respond to this challenge by clarifying the fundamentals on how the IPD is altering national and global patterns of innovation. We choose this leverage point because economists agree that innovation—which we define as the commercialization of new knowledge—is central to global growth and prosperity.
Pamela Mar looks at how Asia's manufacturers can survive, and prosper, amidst changing markets and technological disruption.
APEC officials were in Vietnam for the 2nd Senior Officials Meeting in preparation for the APEC Leaders' summit to be held in Vietnam later this year. Connectivity was high on the agenda, as it is viewed as an essential driver for deepening regional economic integration, which is one of APEC's four key priorities. APEC has launched a 2025 Connectivity Blueprint and is following this up with mid-term goals for 2020.
Pamela Mar outlines the challenges faced by Asia's production centers in a world where connectivity has become more critical.
After the TPP: What's Next for Canada in Asia?
The Trump administration's arrival has scrambled the cards in the trade policy world. Not only will the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) be reopened with uncertain results, but President Donald Trump has scuttled the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) by announcing the United States' withdrawal from the agreement. Canada, originally cool toward the TPP, pushed hard to be included in it. The TPP became the centrepiece of Canada's Asia trade strategy, notwithstanding some public ambivalence on the part of the Trudeau government. With the TPP in its present form now in limbo, Canada still has options in Asia. First, it can keep an open mind with regard to the possible reconstitution of the TPP in another form, such as "TPP Minus One" (i.e., minus the U.S.). It should also push to reopen the bilateral negotiations with Japan that were suspended when that country joined the TPP negotiations. Canada is already exploring the possibility of an economic partnership agreement with China, perhaps on a sectoral basis, and simultaneously, it should actively pursue negotiation of a free trade agreement with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) community. This could in time provide Canada access to the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (RCEP) currently being negotiated among 16 countries in the Asia-Pacific region and would position Canada well in the eventuality that a Free Trade Area of Asia-Pacific (FTAAP) emerges. In the meantime, uncertainty regarding NAFTA's future needs to be addressed. This uncertainty makes it more difficult for Canada to attract Asian investment but it also provides further impetus for Canada to diversify its trading relationships and to explore stronger relationships with Asian economies.
Trade agreements cover 70% of all trade in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). Of the 270 free trade agreements (FTAs) currently in effect around the world, more than 70 include LAC countries.
In order to understand the impact of these agreements on the region, the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) will launch a massive open online course (MOOC) on how they work and what they mean for governments, businesses, and people in LAC.
Over 31 million consumers in Viet Nam researched or purchased a product online in 2015. Just ten years ago, internet connectivity was only starting to become common. Digitization is changing how people trade. There are even more dramatic changes happening under the hood. The way trade is financed, processed and regulated has entered a period of disruption. We take this opportunity to consider the short and long term implications of digitization of the trade process. They're not what you'd expect.
Can Asia transform international investment law?
European and North American capital exporting countries have shaped international investment law for most of its history. They pushed for the customary international minimum standard of protection, forged the classical model of bilateral investment treaties (BITs) and now drive the present recalibration of international investment law. Despite counter-proposals from the 'South' over decades, the making of international investment law has been essentially a transatlantic enterprise with the 'North' as predominant global rule-maker.
But the past years have witnessed a marked shift in the geography of international investment law. Despite the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) negotiations, there is little doubt that Asian countries, and particularly the economic powerhouses in the Far East, are becoming focal points in rule-making in international investment law.
Trade and regional integration must become more inclusive in the Asia-Pacific in order to win the support of public opinion, writes John West.
This note is inspired by the excellent press release, "Regional Solutions Needed for Global Challenges", issued by the Pacific Economic Cooperation Council (PECC) following a recent conference in Jakarta which explored the challenges for next phase of regional cooperation and the role of the media in communicating the benefits of trade and regional integration.
The Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) is back in Latin America for the first time since 2008, when Peru hosted the forum amid the global economic crisis. At that time there were concerns about raising protectionism across the region and increasing demands to reform the global financial system. In 2016, APEC takes place again in Peru, in a new context of economic growth in most of its member economies, but also during a moment when important structural reforms are taking place to secure better quality growth and better conditions for human development.
This article provides Canadian policy makers and businesses with a fresh perspective on APEC, its priorities in 2016, and the role and influence of Latin American economies. After a brief overview of APEC, the article provides context for Latin America-Asia relations, a matter of importance in view of Peru's chairing of APEC in 2016. Peru's dual chairing of APEC and the Pacific Alliance will potentially see Peru capitalize on opportunities for convergence between the organizations. The article then explains the APEC 2016 agenda with reference to the Latin American context, and concludes with a discussion of implications for Canada.
In recent years, free trade agreements (FTAs) have proliferated in the Asia-Pacific region. Most importantly, the mega FTAs consisting of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) have come into existence and will certainly transform the trading environment, since their gross domestic product (GDP) shares are 38% and 29% of the world, respectively. At the same time, the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) is developing the Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific (FTAAP) which will arise in the form of a mega FTA in the future. According to a study by APEC (APEC 2015), if the FTAAP is in place by 2025, it would bring a 4%-5% increase of GDP in the whole region from 2015 and 2% of world total GDP. In order to continue the dynamism that is taking place in Asia-Pacific regional economic integration (REI), it will be necessary to address the most important challenges, that is, the inclusiveness issue. The main purpose of this article is to examine the issue of inclusiveness in the mega FTAs from two dimensions. The first dimension is about inclusiveness through open membership of the mega FTAs while the second dimension focuses on the importance of assisting small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to benefit from the mega FTAs.
Linking APEC FTAAP with TPP and RCEPDuring the 2010 APEC Economic Leaders' Meeting, leaders made a significant point in the Yokohama Declaration that they will seek to realize the FTAAP. Particularly, the FTAAP will serve to enhance the advancement of APEC's regional economic integration. Moreover, the FTAAP will be pursued in the form of a comprehensive FTA through building on ASEAN+3, ASEAN+6, and the TPP (APEC 2010). With this important announcement, APEC has embarked actively on the quest for attaining the FTAAP that includes the linkage with regional mega FTAs.
After five and a half years of negotiations, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement was reached on October 5, 2015. Yet it is too early to celebrate as the agreement must be ratified by the participating countries including those where anti-TPP protestors have significant political influence. The TPP is a free trade agreement (FTA) among 12 Asia-Pacific countries, which together account for approximately 40% of the world's gross domestic product (GDP). Not only is it extremely ambitious in the level of liberalization in trade in goods, investment, and services, but also comprehensive in its coverage, setting rules for such areas as electronic commerce, government procurement, intellectual property, labor, and the environment. The TPP has high potential to promote economic growth and improve people's living standards by facilitating the free cross-border movement of key factors of economic activity, such as goods, people, money, and information. Failure to bring the TPP into force would be a great loss to not only the TPP countries such as Japan and the United States but also the global economy.
TPP and the revitalization of the Japanese economyFollowing the collapse of its economic bubble, Japan plunged into a prolonged period of stagnation which now has come to be referred to as the "lost two decades." Thanks to the expansionary monetary and fiscal policies under the leadership of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and his second Cabinet formed in December 2012, the Japanese economy was boosted in 2013. But the effect was short-lived and the economy has been sluggish since 2014. The stagnation of the Japanese economy can be partly attributable to external factors such as a slowdown in the global economy. However, internal factors—i.e., a shrinking and aging population, massive government debts, and slow responses to structural problems such as the closed nature of the market—are more serious. In revitalizing the Japanese economy, which is currently in such a dire predicament, the TPP will be playing an important role.