Japan Not Rushing Into A Bad Trade Deal With Trump

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The complete list of members is: Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Canada, Chile, People's Republic of China, Hong Kong, Chinese Taipei, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Peru, the Philippines, Russia, Singapore, Thailand, the US and Vietnam. APEC's mission is laid out at this link .

On its website, APEC answers the question“What Does APEC Do?” with“APEC ensures that goods, services, investment and people move easily across borders.” Except that it does not and cannot do so, because“There are no binding commitments or treaty obligations. Commitments are undertaken on a voluntary basis.”

In principle, the US, which now champions protectionism, restrictions on investment, reversing the process of economic integration and discouraging or forbidding economic and technical cooperation, no longer qualifies for membership in APEC. But in practice, there is no established procedure for expulsion of a member who works in opposition to the organization's mission.

According to some media reports, Australia, Canada, Russia and Singapore joined Japan in not sending their most senior trade representatives to Jeju, implying displeasure with Donald Trump's combative protectionism. However, official announcements from the respective governments do not support this view.

Regardless of what they think about Trump's extremely high tariffs and belligerence, diplomacy prevailed and the 21 participants in the APEC meetings issued a joint statement declaring that:“We remain committed to the Putrajaya Vision 2040, including through the implementation of the Aotearoa Plan of Action to build an open, dynamic, resilient, and peaceful Asia-Pacific community for the prosperity of all our people and future generations.”

Putrajaya Vision 2040 , endorsed by APEC leaders in 2020 in Malaysia, aims“To ensure that the Asia-Pacific remains the world's most dynamic and interconnected regional economy.” To this end, APEC“will continue to work together to deliver, a free, open, fair, non-discriminatory, transparent and predictable trade and investment environment.”

The Aotearoa Plan , announced in 2021 in New Zealand, lays out specific actions to be taken in order to realized the Putrajaya Vision, among them promotion of a market-driven digital economy, policies to support innovation, and support for“global efforts to comprehensively address all environmental challenges, including climate change, extreme weather and natural disasters, for a sustainable planet.”

This aligns neither with Trump's intent to Make America Great Again nor his withdrawal from the Paris Agreement on climate change and roll-back of environmental protection in the US. Washington, DC, is a long way from Malaysia's Putrajaya and New Zealand's Aotearoa.

The joint statement issued in Jeju also notes that:

“We recognize the importance of the WTO to advance trade issues, and acknowledge the agreed upon rules in the WTO as an integral part of the global trading system. We recognize the WTO has challenges and needs meaningful, necessary, and comprehensive reform to improve all its functions, through innovative approaches, to be more relevant and responsive in light of today's realities. We commend the efforts to deepen discussions in the WTO on contemporary trade issues.”

This may be interpreted as indirectly addressing the US complaint, which dates from the Obama administration, that the WTO has allowed itself to be taken advantage of by China. But the fact remains that the US has crippled the WTO by blocking appointments to its appellate body, which now sits vacant. Furthermore, at the end of March, it was reported that the Trump administration has put US funding for the WTO under review .