A road map for the Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific was sketched out at the recent Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit in Beijing.
Ministers of the 21 APEC member nations agreed to “launch and comprehensively and systemically push forward the FTAAP process.”
In the summit declaration, it was stated that the rules-based multilateral trading system would remain a key tenet of APEC. The FTAAP should be pursued on the basis of supporting and complementing the multilateral trading system.
“The FTAAP should do more than achieve liberalization in its narrow sense; it should be comprehensive, high quality and incorporate and address ‘next generation’ trade and investment issues.”
A collective strategic study on issues related to the realization of the FTAAP by building on and updating existing studies and past work, providing an analysis of potential economic and social benefits and costs, performing a stock take of FTAs in force in the region, has been announced and will be submitted by the end of 2016.
The member countries account for 40 percent of the world’s population, 54 percent of its economic output and 44 percent of trade, making it a very powerful entity and clearly a deal to watch out for.
It will take a while, but given the interest shown by China, it may proceed faster than the TPP.