1150 Seventeenth Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036
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President Obama will soon attend his first Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) leaders' summit in Singapore, underscoring U.S. engagement and commitment to the region. Unlike other regional institutions, the APEC forum provides an opportunity for the United States to participate in the policy dialogue of a dynamic, economically-diverse region of
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the world. This year's agenda includes significant attention to the current economic climate and to the reinforcement of the G20 summit measures for economic growth and recovery. Japan, the United States' most important ally in Asia, is set to host the 2010 APEC summit. The 2011 meeting will take place in the United States, providing the Obama administration with an excellent opportunity to shape the APEC agenda and ensure American influence in the region in the years to come. Will the Obama administration use this opportunity to define a U.S. trade policy? Can the new administrations in Tokyo and Washington work together to set a regional agenda? Will the United States be able to create and assume a central role in APEC despite increased momentum toward an "Asian community"?
At this event, Matthew Goodman, senior adviser to the under secretary of state for economic affairs; international trade expert Jeffrey J. Schott, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics; Amitav Acharya of American University; and AEI resident scholars Claude Barfield and Michael Auslin will discuss the importance and impact of the APEC summit, as well as long-term U.S. policy and interests in the Asia-Pacific region.
| 1:45 p.m. | Registration | |
| 2:00 | Panelists: | Amitav Acharya, American University |
| Claude Barfield, AEI | ||
| Matthew Goodman, State Department | ||
| Jeffrey J. Schott, Peterson Institute | ||
| Moderator: | Michael Auslin, AEI | |
| 4:00 | Adjournment |
1150 Seventeenth Street, N.W.
Washington, DC 20036
Phone: 202-862-7160
E-mail: leslie.forgach@aei.org
American Enterprise Institute
1150 Seventeenth Street, N.W.
Washington, DC 20036
Phone: 202-862-4871
E-mail: VRodman@aei.org
WASHINGTON, NOVEMBER 10, 2009--This year's Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit allows the Obama administration to start engaging Asia. At an AEI event on November 10, held during the week of the APEC summit and five days prior to the APEC leaders' meeting, a panel of experts examined the agenda of this year's twentieth anniversary of the APEC summit and discussed the importance of U.S. engagement in Asian regionalism.
Matt Goodman, senior adviser to the undersecretary of state for economic affairs, said "we are not just interested in showing up, but showing up in force and pursuing a broad and rich agenda." APEC works on three levels: it is the only forum that allows the U.S. president to stay engaged in the region, it moves trade liberalization forward with the ultimate goal of free trade in Asia, and it coordinates efforts to ensure a safe and stable region to help attract foreign investments. Beyond Asia, APEC is valuable as a "logical extension" of the G20 summit discussions, with half of its members participating in both forums. As Goodman said, "Rather than separate events, global summits these days should be seen as a continuum in which a significant part of the agenda carries forward from one event to the next, and APEC is a very important step in this continuum."
Looking back at its twenty-year history, Amitav Acharya, Professor at American University, said an important lesson of APEC concerns U.S. leadership. "When the U.S. tried to pull its weight in APEC, and move it in the direction of serving its own strategic interests—it invited a blowback and APEC floundered." As a result, the United States became disinterested and aloof from Asian regionalism. Acharya made three suggestions for U.S. policy in Asia going forward: keep APEC alive, keep the United States engaged in Asian regional agreements, and keep the United States interested in Asia. United States participation this year and its role as host of the 2011 summit is an opportunity to realize these goals.
Jeffrey Schott, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute, said "competitive liberalization is alive and well in East Asia and that will continue to be the case whether or not the U.S. remains engaged." But the cost of U.S. inaction in Asian economic agreements is costly. The free trade agreement recently signed between the European Union and South Korea is one such example because it diverts U.S. exports from European and Korean markets. Schott said this could easily be remedied by ratifying the U.S.-South Korea Free Trade Agreement. The United States should not be left behind, Schott warned: "Asia is the growth pole of the world economy and of strategic interest to the U.S."
AEI's Claude Barfield stressed the key to APEC is "not just rooted in economics or trade, but the place of America in Asia." The United States should remain engaged, but more importantly should enlist the help of its allies in pursuing common goals. "We have blundered at times in the past with APEC–it's in our interest to have allies really take the lead." Barfield praised Singapore's role in pushing forward allied cooperation on this year's agenda and criticized Japan's inability to form a viable strategy. "Our most important ally is an ally that can't get its act together." It will be important for the United States and Japan to work together on coordinating their trade policies in the coming years, especially as hosts of the next two consecutive APEC summits.
Speaker biographies
Amitav Acharya is professor of international relations at the School of International Service at American University and chair of the University's Association of South East Asian Nations Studies Center. His previous appointments include professor of global governance and director of the Centre for Governance and International Affairs at the University of Bristol; professor, deputy director, and head of research at the Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore; professor of political science at York University, Toronto; fellow of the Harvard University Asia Center; and fellow of Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government. Mr. Acharya has written numerous publications, the most recent of which was Whose Ideas Matter: Agency and Power in Asian Regionalism (Cornell, 2009). He has been published in journals including International Organization, International Security, World Politics, Journal of Peace Research, Pacific Affairs, and Washington Quarterly.
Michael Auslin, AEI's director of Japan studies, was an associate professor of history and senior research fellow at the MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies at Yale University prior to joining AEI. He has been named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum, a Marshall Memorial Fellow by the German Marshall Fund, and a Fulbright and Japan Foundation Scholar. His writings on Japan and Japanese diplomacy include the books Negotiating with Imperialism: The Unequal Treaties and the Culture of Japanese Diplomacy (Harvard University Press, 2006) and Japan Society: Celebrating a Century, 1907-2007 (Japan Society Gallery, 2007).
Claude Barfield is a resident scholar at AEI. He is the author or editor of a number of books on trade and science policy, including Free Trade, Sovereignty, Democracy: The Future of the World Trade Organization (AEI Press, 2001). In 1999, he coauthored Tiger by the Tail: China and the World Trade Organization (AEI Press) with Mark Groombridge. Mr. Barfield is working with Andrei Zlate on the forthcoming AEI Press book The Eagle and the Dragon: The United States, China, and the Rise of Asian Regionalism. Before coming to AEI, he served in the Gerald R. Ford administration on the staff of the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee and as a co-staff director of the President's Commission for a National Agenda for the Eighties.
Matthew Goodman is senior adviser to the under secretary for economic, energy, and agricultural affairs at the U.S. Department of State. Prior to joining the State Department in August 2009, Mr. Goodman worked for five years at Stonebridge International LLC, a global business advisory firm based in Washington, D.C., where he was managing director in charge of the firm's Asia practice. Prior to joining Stonebridge, Mr. Goodman served at the White House as director for Asian economic affairs on the U.S. National Security Council from 2002 to 2004. He also worked for nine years (1988-97) as an international economist at the U.S. Department of the Treasury, including five years at the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo, where he served as financial attaché. He also spent five years (1997-2002) at Goldman, Sachs & Co., where he headed the investment bank's government affairs operations in Tokyo and London. Mr. Goodman began his professional career in the mid-1980s as a reporter and copy editor at Nihon Keizai Shimbun in Tokyo.
Jeffrey J. Schott joined the Peterson Institute for International Economics in 1983 and is a senior fellow working on international trade policy and economic sanctions. During his tenure at the institute, Schott was also a visiting lecturer at Princeton University (1994) and an adjunct professor at Georgetown University (1986-88). He was a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (1982-83) and an official of the U.S. Department of the Treasury (1974-82) in international trade and energy policy. During the Tokyo round of multilateral trade negotiations, he was a member of the U.S. delegation that negotiated the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade Subsidies Code. Since January 2003, he has been a member of the Trade and Environment Policy Advisory Committee of the U.S. government. He is also a member of the Advisory Committee on International Economic Policy of the U.S. Department of State.
