The leaders from the Asia Pacific Rim have declared that the revival of the held up round of world trade talks is their top most priority. This is a signal that it will be given priority over the US plan for free trade agreement. The Asia-pacific Economic Cooperation is a group of 21 members. The cooperation will wait till next year to mill over the long term APEC wide trade deal. This is a plan B in case Doha is a failure. The Doha round of talks got held up last July over the issue of rich nations’ farm subsidies. The APEC leaders said that they were ready to move beyond their current positions
The President of US has proposed a separate regional free trade zone. This idea has received mixed reactions. The leaders believe that the failure of the Doha round will have a grave influence on the global multilateral trading system as well as their economies.
The members of APEC account for nearly half of the global trade. They are using the planned free trade zone to pressurize the European Union to improve its offer on farm subsidies. Let’s see whether the rich nations will be successful in pressurizing the third world countries.
