reducing impediments to economic transactions among APEC economies if non-participants, especially the EU, were to benefit without undertaking comparable measures All of these factors will combine to make it difficult for the USA to make unilateral commitment to reduce to international economic transactions in line with President Clinton's Bogor comrnament. This will apply especially to trade liberalization, the subject of most past international economic co-operation. With respect to a US "down-payment on APEC at Osaka, their chief official responsible for APEC emphasized that (Kristoff, 1995) the US really isn't in a position to make any tariff reduction offers We will, however, be deregu ing at some measures in the on area perhaps in telecommunications. transportation and energy These comments tend to confirm that the USA is not likely to reduce its traditional market access barriers beyond the binding commitments made in the Uruguay Round, which have already been authorized by Congress However, as long as the US does offer a worthwhile set of unilateral decisions to ease regulations which impede international commerce, other APEC participants should be content to allow the US to lag behind in traditional trade liberalization US tariffs are already very low and they are committed to a very substantial easing of quantitative restrictions. particularly the textiles as the Multi Fibre Agreement is phased out, as agreed in the Uruguay Round. lmplementing these commitments will provide significantly improved access for East Asian exports and the "standstill commitment of the Bogor declaration will ease uncertainty about the risk of increasing future protection of labour-intensive products. A scenario in which Asian participants of APEC taking the early lead on unilateral liberalization while the USA may do no more than implement existing GATT/WTO commitments could have some useful side benefits. It could help to dispel an impression, held by many in the USA, that East Asia markets are closed while theirs is open, thereby easing a major source of recent trade friction which threatens any meaningful trans-Pacific economic co operation. In the context APEC Itself, earlier liberalization by East Asia governments should help bolster confidence that a process of concerted unilateral decision-making can deliver substantial gains, including to US firms By 2000 or so, liberalization by other APEC participants may enable the USA to make some unilateral trade liberalization decisions of its own If that still proved difficult, with the Congress continuing to insist on strict, negotiated reciprocity, the USA could make the trade liberalization decisions needed to meet its Bogor commitments as part of a round of WTO negotiations In such a round, Asian participants of APEC would be to offer to bind, in the WTO, all of the unilateral reductions in their traditional trade barriers beyond their minimum Uruguay Round obligations, undertaken since 1995 as part of the APEC process. The USA, on its part, would offer to undertake