Why bother about
APEC? It is basically just a talk-shop. The major goal, known as the ‘Bogor
Declaration’, is to achieve ‘free and open trade and investment’ in the richer
countries of the region by 2010 and all the rest by 2020.
But few, if any,
of its members intend to deliver on that promise. This is partly because of
major divisions among APEC members. The US, Australia, New Zealand, Chile and
Mexico support the radical free trade approach to globalization; the Japanese,
Chinese and other Asian governments prefer a focus on economic cooperation and
integration.
Other important
counter-pressures have helped to undermine APEC’s importance in recent years.
These include popular resistance to free trade and neoliberal policies at the
national level, financial and economic crises in the region, and competing
strategic interests. By the late 1990s when the APEC meeting was held in
Auckland, people suggested its initials really meant ‘Aging Politicians
Enjoying Cocktails’!
It continues to
serve a number of symbolic functions. APEC is described as a forum of
economies, not governments. But its
main public showpiece, the leaders’ meeting, is really an opportunity for
political leaders of countries on the Pacific Rim, Asia and Oceania to discuss
strategic and related economic issues.
And there have plenty of these. In fact a strategic crisis has arisen
before almost every recent meeting. The Asian financial crisis dominated in
Canada in1997; the standoff between Malaysia and the US in Kuala Lumpur in1998;
the East Timor crisis in Auckland in 1999; the post-Seattle crisis in 2000; and
the September 11 attacks in Shanghai in 2001. Their focus in Mexico this year will
be the looming war in Iraq and the bombing in Bali.
Most observers
agree that the APEC leaders meetings are only likely to continue as long as the
US President comes. So if other leaders want to keep meeting they have to make
it worth his while.
Businesses in
the region have invested a lot over the years to make APEC appear more
substantial than it is. Every year the APEC Business Advisory Council (ABAC)
and the CEO summit demand that APEC governments open their markets and reduce
barriers to expansion throughout the region. Every year they express disappointment
that governments aren’t taking either them or the slogan that ‘APEC means
business’ seriously enough. Throughout the year other meetings for women, small
business and youth make unconvincing attempts to put a social face on globalization
by promoting the mythology that free trade and free markets will deliver the
poor and oppressed from poverty and exploitation. No one takes much notice of
them.
But APEC does
have a more serious side. It forms part of a strongly linked network that spans
across the WTO, IMF, World Bank, Asian Development Bank, NAFTA, lobby groups
like the International Chamber of Commerce, private investors, credit rating
agencies, international media and more. Together they reinforce and strengthen
the corporate globalization agenda and silence any voices of dissent.
APEC approaches
this task in many ways. A mass of working groups bring together officials,
academics, business people and occasionally unions to recommend policies and
practices that would make life easier for businesses across the region. Many of
these groups are ineffective. Some are uncontroversial. But others aim to open
markets for transnational companies, adding to the pressure on governments from
other international forums. For example, the Energy Working Group, Energy
Expert Groups and an Energy Forum form a lobby which has met four times with
Energy Ministers to promote market-driven approaches to the energy
infrastructure -meaning deregulation, privatization and ‘public/private
partnerships’.
The Investment
Experts Group seeks out views of the private/business sector on priorities for
opening up foreign investment. In Mexico in May it held a workshop on regional
and bilateral investment rules and agreements. These agreements have become
much more important since the attempt to negotiation a Multilateral Agreement
on Investment at the OECD was suspended in 1998. Investors have relied on a
two-pronged approach. While they try to secure an investment agreement at the
WTO they also aim to achieve ‘high quality’ investment commitments, modeled on
chapter 11 of NAFTA, at the bilateral and regional levels.
Another core
target is the services sector, ranging from health, education and broadcasting
to environment, electricity, roads, rail, ports, and other core infrastructure.
The aim is to remove restrictions on foreign investment and foreign provision
of essential services, and outlaw any preference for local services providers,
whether they are publicly or privately owned. A Menu of Options has been prepared that sets out a list of measures
governments could adopt, and how to achieve them. Initial in-depth studies are
focused on insurance, distribution, health and tourism. Again, this coincides
with the negotiations on the General Agreement on Trade in Services at the
World Trade Organisation to open the services markets of all member countries.
Like most of
these agencies APEC talks in code. The latest fashion is ‘capacity building’ of
governments to help them implement free market policies. Part of the new
project, Strengthening the Functioning of
Markets, includes advice on building the economic legal infrastructure -
corporate law, competition policy, tax and accounting laws that are necessary
for deregulated market economies. Seminars promoting deregulation have focused
on energy, telecommunications, transport and finance. The New Zealand
government, which has pursued a radical neoliberal agenda since 1984, has been
pushing this hard. There is also a Capacity Building Group on Implementation of
WTO obligations.
Higher level
meetings bring the finance ministers together with IMF, World Bank and Asian
Development Bank officials. This has strengthened the IMF-led model that
resists regulation of capital movements and stresses the need to build and maintain
the confidence of international investment community. They have only one
economic development model - ‘sustainable economic growth’ by ‘strengthening
market fundamentals’ across the region.
The APEC trade
ministers meetings also promote the free trade and investment agenda at many
levels. In the late 1990s the WTO seemed to be paralysed after Seattle and it
was clear that APEC had lost any credibility as a negotiating forum. A number
of neoliberal governments within APEC decided they could help restore the
globalization momentum by negotiating free trade and investment agreements at
the bilateral level. Their aim was to rebuild from the bottom up, linking these
agreements together at a regional and multilateral level. The annual APEC
meetings provided a platform for announcing and boosting those negotiations.
APEC also provided an important justification for such agreements. The New
Zealand has used the APEC goal of free trade and investment by 2010 to justify
bilateral agreements with Singapore, and potentially with Hong Kong, Chile and
the US, that would remove the only remaining tariffs, which apply to clothing
and textiles, and lock in the very open investment regime introduced since
1985.
Perhaps APEC’s
most important role is to prepare the ground for negotiations at the WTO and
reduce blockages. Statements of support for the WTO are always made at APEC
meetings, although the motives of governments are not always the same. The US,
Australia and New Zealand say these statements demonstrate widespread support
for the WTO’s free trade agenda. But countries like Malaysia prefer to
negotiate within the WTO than within APEC, which they have little time for. The
APEC trade ministers meetings have been held just before the WTO Ministerial
meetings in Singapore and Doha. This years APEC meeting will build on the
meeting in Monterrey for the Financing for Development and the World Summit on
Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, both of which were visibly manipulated
to reinforce the Doha agenda and suppress any alternative models of social and
economic development.
APEC is also a
site for the backroom dealings that have come to typify the WTO. For example,
support for splitting the leadership of the WTO between the US-sponsored Mike
Moore and Thailand’s Supachai Panitchpakdi was first discussed at APEC.
This year they
will attempt to build alliances and broker deals as part of the preparation for
the Cancun ministerial next September. Undoubtedly APEC ministers will
enthusiastically endorse the Cancun WTO Ministerial, especially as Mexico is
the host of both. They will try to secure some common ground on the three
issues that are seen as the major barriers on the ‘Road to Cancun’. The first
is the agreement on affordable medicines for countries that don’t have the
capacity to produce them themselves. The second involves implementation issues
for poorer countries arising from the Uruguay Round agreements. The third is
the removal of agricultural subsidies. The major players on all these issues
are absent - India and Brazil in TRIPS, the G-77 and most of the ‘least
developed countries’, and the Europeans on agriculture. But these discussions
at APEC will feed into the invitation-only meeting of WTO ministers to be held
in Sydney in mid-November.
So why bother at
all about APEC? Not because it has any real significance on its own. But
because it symbolises the globalization process and the power that confers on
transnational companies, international investors and major powers, especially
the US; because it is used to legitimise and move forward a globalization
process based on disempowerment, exploitation and deepening poverty; and
because it poses another barrier to securing genuine people centred economic
alternatives.
So it is
important for people and groups who are committed to fighting neoliberal
policies of privatization, deregulation and anti-unionism at the local level to
say no to APEC. It is important for those of us who believe in social justice,
freedom from poverty and people-centred sustainable development to say no to
APEC. And it is important for those of us who are committed to indigenous
self-determination and struggles against imperialism, including the latest
US-led wars, to say no to APEC. APEC is only one small cog in the wheel. But it
is important that we make our voices heard from every part of the world every
time our governments pretend they have a mandate to promote this immoral agenda
in our names.
Professor Jane Kelsey, Law Faculty, Auckland University, New Zealand and member of the Action, Research and Education Network of Aotearoa (New Zealand).