Asian business leaders frustrated over world trade deal
Updated
The Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit gets underway in earnest this weekend in Singapore. Ahead of the formal leaders' meeting, CEOs and business leaders have held a pre-APEC meeting in Singapore, where they expressed frustration over the failure of politicians to seal a new world trade deal. Singapore's Prime Minister has talked up plans for a trans-Pacific free trade area, saying it could deliver big economic gains, while Chinese President Hu Jintao made a much-anticipated appearance and speech at the meeting.
Presenter: Linda Mottram
Speakers: Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong; Chinese President Hu Jintao; Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak; Dr Victor Fung, business leader
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MOTTRAM: A small seed is how Singapore's Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong describes the idea for a trans-Pacific trade agreement. But as CEOs from around the world gathered in Singapore to discuss the bumpy and still risk-laden global economic and financial outlook, Prime Minister Lee said there was now no choice for regional economies but to link up and work together; to expand the small seed that now includes just four countries.
LEE: The US, Australia, Peru and Vietnam have expressed interest to join. We hope this will materialise as soon as possible. When it materialises it will be a significant advance towards the ideal of a free trade area which encompasses the whole Asia Pacific.
MOTTRAM: But for one senior Asian business leader the real measure of political commitment to free trade lies elsewhere. Dr Victor Fung is a CEO, author and former academic and he laid out the dangers he sees lurking with the prospects that global demand may not go back to where it was before the crisis.
FUNG: There is no substitute; there is no substitute for the rejuvenation of trade around the world and the global, multilateral trading system if we are going to permanently cement this recovery.
MOTTRAM: Dr Fung described multilateral free trade as the lifeblood of the recovery but said he saw no sign that enough was being done to reinvigorate it; a reference to the repeated failure to get agreement for a new global free trade deal known as the Doha Round.
FUNG: The multilateral trading system is under siege. If you look at what has happened even since the last G20 meeting in Pittsburgh, there's been rising signs of protectionist measures; you know tariffs on tyres, on all sorts of things, automobile parts etc. And I think there's a real danger that we would start a tit-for-tat trade war and see a rise of protectionism around the world.
MOTTRAM: Dr Fung openly challenged the leaders present for APEC to push quickly to conclude the Doha Round, to forget about the details that have been bogging it down and to do what's right for the global economy, declaring the next 12 to 18 months to be a dangerous period as unemployment rises.
FUNG: I don't think there's any one symbol that would actually show the world leaders' commitment to the multilateral trading system and their desire to work together to actually see us out of this crisis, than a completion of the Doha Round.
MOTTRAM: For Malaysia's Prime Minister Najib Razak who shared the platform with Dr Fung it was a chance to stress his open market credentials. He's been in power only a few months but he's joined other countries in putting massive economic stimulus in place. He pledged to fight to get Malaysia's economy growing at 5 per cent next year, up from 3 this year. And he's warned his country's private sector it needs to do more to reshape Malaysia's economic patterns. Najib Razak also took up Dr Fung's challenge on global free trade.
RAZAK: APEC in Singapore is a wonderful opportunity for us to make a very strong political statement that we will fight protectionism; we resist protectionism, that we want the Doha Round to be completed.
MOTTRAM: It was China's President Hu Jintao though who was the centerpiece of the first day of the CEO summit.
HU: The profound impact of the financial crisis is still evident and the world economic upturn is not yet firmly established.
MOTTRAM: It was a speech restating China's measures to combat the downturn, including strengthening social institutions, and he chimed in with the call for greater trade and investment liberalisation, particularly he said for developing countries. And President Hu underlined he uniquely massive task that China has among developing nations. As much as anything though it was simply his presence and concurrence with the overall APEC view of matters that provided a degree of comfort to still nervous political and business leaders.
