http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/getarticle.pl5?nb20010713a2.htm
...The trade and investment pact [Osaka Action Agenda]was signed by top leaders from the 21 member economies of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum as a guideline for realizing a goal established a year earlier in Bogor, Indonesia -- to liberalize trade and investment along the Pacific Rim by 2010 for industrialized members and by 2020 for developing members.
The language in the pact is vague, calling for the APEC economies to "progressively" reduce import tariffs. What's more, the members haven't even agreed on the definition of "liberalization."
If liberalization is taken in the broadest possible sense, APEC economies would have to do away with all import tariffs.
But if liberalization is taken in the narrowest possible sense, they would only have to lift bans or quotas on foreign products and on investments by deadlines set in Bogor.
But Bush appears to be trying to settle the issue quickly by calling for the elimination of import tariffs on all goods traded within the bloc. [...] Since taking office in mid-January, the Bush administration's trade policy has prioritized expanding the North American Free Trade Agreement -- which encompasses the U.S., Canada and Mexico -- to include other Western Hemispheric countries, most notably Chile, and forming the Free Trade Area of the Americas among all 35 countries in the Western Hemisphere, except Cuba. At their meeting in Quebec, Canada in April, top leaders from the 34 Western Hemispheric countries agreed to launch the FTAA by the end of 2005.
So, why is the Bush administration turning to APEC?
"It probably wants to use any available forum to promote liberalization of global trade and investment, for the sake of domestic exporters and investors," one senior Japanese trade official said, asking that he not be named.
Said another senior trade official: "The Bush administration may want to accelerate liberalization of trade and investment within APEC in order to put indirect pressure on the 15-nation European Union."
While holding membership negotiations with 12 Central and East European countries -- all of which were Soviet satellite states during the Cold War -- to expand itself eastward, the EU, which is not an APEC member, is also aggressively trying to cozy up to what the U.S. has long considered to be its own backyard: Latin America.
The EU concluded a free-trade agreement with Mexico in July last year. It is also negotiating a free-trade agreement with Mercosur -- a customs union comprising Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay. Chile and Bolivia are also associate Mercosur members. The EU also held its first summit with Latin America in Rio de Janeiro in June 1999.
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http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/getarticle.pl5?nb20010713a2.htm
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