Asia-Pacific Trade Panel to Meet

Trade ministers from the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation group begin talks this week aimed at kick-starting a new round of trade liberalization, less than six months after the World Trade Organization’s meeting in Seattle ended in running street battles with protesters and clouds of tear gas. The Tuesday-Wednesday meeting in Australia, made up of trade ministers from the 21-member APEC group, which accounts for more than 60% of world economic output, will also mark the first formal trade talks since the U.S. Congress and the European Union agreed to allow China and its 1 billion consumers into the WTO.

“We’re all aware of what happened in Seattle,” Australia Trade Minister Mark Vaile said. “There’s still got to be an absolute focus to launch that round of multilateral trade negotiations.” Vaile, who’s chairing the talks, said that’s all the more vital given “the global energies that have gone into supporting China’s accession” to the trade group. “With the return to growth in most of the economies in Southeast Asia, we would like to get the focus of trade liberalization back on the agenda.” Mike Moore, the WTO director-general, will be there, as will Richard Fisher, deputy U.S. trade representative, Japan’s minister of industry and trade, Takashi Fukaya and Chinese Trade Minister Shi Guangsheng.

Jim Sutton, New Zealand’s trade minister, said the two-day agenda is aimed at “getting everyone facing in the right direction.” A more formal meeting of APEC chiefs of government in Brunei in November will give more impetus to keep the “train moving,” he said. The Darwin APEC talks will be the first major meeting of trade ministers since the U.S. and the European Union paved the way for China to enter the WTO, a move which will open the world’s biggest market, which has grown at better than 7% a year for the last decade, to U.S. and European consumer goods and businesses. “China’s WTO accession is now basically assured,” Vaile said after Congress OKd permanent normal trade relations.