Asia-Pacific

APEC Leaders Vow to Maintain Free Trade System

REUTERS/Agustin Marcarian
Russia’s Deputy Prime Minister Alexei Overchuk, Papua New Guinea’s Deputy Prime Minister John Rosso, New Zealand’s Prime Minister Christopher Luxon, Singapore Prime Minister Lawrence Wong, Taiwan’s APEC representative Lin Hsin-i, Thailand’s Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra, U.S. President Joe Biden, Vietnam’s President Luong Cuong, Chinese President Xi Jinping, Peru’s President Dina Boluarte, Hong Kong Chief Executive John Lee, Indonesia’s President Prabowo Subianto, South Korea’s President Yoon Suk Yeol, Malaysia’s Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim pose for a family photo during the APEC summit in Lima, Peru, November 16, 2024.

Jiji Press

17:53 JST, November 17, 2024

Lima, Peru (Jiji Press)—Leaders of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum on Saturday reaffirmed their commitment to maintaining and strengthening the free trade system amid growing concerns over the spread of protectionism.

“We acknowledge the importance of, and will continue to work to deliver a free, open, fair, nondiscriminatory, transparent, inclusive and predictable trade and investment environment,” the leaders of the 21-member APEC said in a statement adopted at the end of their two-day summit in Lima, Peru.

The APEC leaders also said, “We reaffirm our support for the rules-based multilateral trading system.”

In a separate statement, the APEC leaders said the group will analyze areas of divergence and convergence in existing free trade agreements to promote work on a proposed Free Trade Area of the Asia Pacific, or FTAAP. APEC will review the analysis in 2030.

On the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, a chair’s statement said, “Some economies considered that these issues have an impact on the global economy and could be treated in APEC, while other economies do not believe that APEC is a forum to discuss these issues.”

Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba told his APEC counterparts that he is gravely concerned about expanding military cooperation between Moscow and Pyongyang, including the deployment of North Korean troops to Russia to assist in Moscow’s war in Ukraine.