Word: apec
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Howard, who has ruled Australia for more than 11 years, seems to be having a change of heart - at least rhetorically. Australia is hosting the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum this week, and Howard, with Bush's approval, has pushed climate change to the top of the agenda. He wants APEC - made up of 21 nations bordering the Pacific, including big carbon emitters like the U.S., China, Russia and Japan - to consider long-term "aspirational goals" on reducing carbon emissions, rather than the binding cuts called for in Kyoto. Such flexibility, he argues, would help bring major developing economies...
...summit's most practical results are likely to come in the area of structural reform, which even Colin Heseltine, director of the APEC Secretariat in Singapore, describes as "rather dry." So far the organization has focused on reducing red tape, tariffs and other barriers between borders. It now wants to move behind borders, helping members harmonize their approach to business competition and regulation, product standards and corporate governance. A recent study at the Australian National University's College of Asia and the Pacific estimated that fully implementing such reforms would add over $100 billion a year to APEC's collective...
...That pretty much sums up APEC, which, as Australian Prime Minister John Howard likes to say, does its best work "under the radar." As a club based on informal cooperation, APEC doesn't set rules or impose targets. Instead, it promotes free-market values and offers practical help in implementing them. "It builds a climate in which trade liberalization is seen as the right direction," says Heseltine. "To resile from that, to move backward, actually becomes very hard." For a quick measure of APEC's effectiveness, says Oxley, contrast Vietnam and Venezuela. Vietnam, embracing APEC's open-market model...
...Increasing the tilt toward a regional FTA is the malaise in the World Trade Organization, where the Doha Round of talks, aimed at getting rich economies to lower barriers to poor nations' exports, has been in gridlock for years. The APEC leaders are expected to issue a statement urging a breakthrough, but they did that last year and the year before that to no avail. And if the Doha talks fail, says economist Edwards, "it becomes all the more important that this region have the widest free-trade agreement possible." Downer, however, sees that as a very remote prospect...
...Critics say APEC's successes are vague and its influence fading. Former Australian P.M. Paul Keating, who helped convene the first leaders' summit in 1993, has slammed APEC as "a talk shop of debatable output." The region has other forums, notably the 16-member East Asian Summit. But, says HSBC's Edwards, only APEC "includes both China and the U.S. and all the economies that have most to lose if their relationship broke down. There are all sorts of points of tension between the two that can be modulated by the diplomacy of the others." With many members allied with...