APEC USA 2011: Outcomes

Hosting APEC for the first time since 1993, the United States worked in partnership with APEC economies in 2011 to deliver tangible, significant results toward the goal of a “seamless regional economy” that will create opportunities for prosperity and job creation throughout the region.

Under the chairmanship of President Obama, APEC Leaders agreed on concrete outcomes that will promote economic growth and improve the quality of life of the people across the Asia-Pacific by (1) strengthening regional economic integration and expanding trade; (2) promoting green growth; and (3) advancing regulatory cooperation and convergence.

Strengthening Regional Economic Integration and Expanding Trade

Greater economic integration and expansion of trade continues to be APEC's core mission. Leaders recognized the significant role trade and investment play in creating jobs, generating economic prosperity, and promoting peace and security in the region. In order to pursue these objectives, Leaders agreed to address next-generation trade and investment issues that will lay the foundation for 21st century agreements in the region, including a Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific (FTAAP).

Specifically, Leaders agreed to take concrete steps to further open markets and facilitate trade in the region, including by:

• Implementing a set of policies that will ensure innovation policy in the Asia-Pacific is effective, market-driven, and non-discriminatory, and non-protectionist, in recognition of the key role that entrepreneurship plays in increasing productivity and ensuring economic growth;
  
  
• Breaking down barriers to small business trading in the region, including by promoting small business engagement in global production chains through regional trade agreements;
  
  
• Making it cheaper, easier, and faster for businesses to trade in the region by establishing commercially useful de minimis values that will exempt low-value shipments from customs duties and further simplify customs requirements and documentation;
  
  
• Promoting domestic structural reforms in APEC economies to minimize behind-the-border barriers to trade;
  
  
• Implementing the APEC Cross Border Privacy Rules System to reduce barriers to information flow and enhance consumer privacy; and
  
  
• Facilitating commerce and promoting economic growth by pursuing liberalization of air cargo services.

Supporting Green Growth and Green Jobs

APEC reaffirmed the importance of advancing its shared green growth objectives, including by protecting the environment and ensuring that long-term growth is sustainable. APEC's agenda focused on ways to help members transition to a clean energy future and confront the challenges of climate change. APEC Leaders' agreed in Honolulu to take steps to speed the transition to a global low-carbon economy, while enhancing energy security and creating new sources of economic growth and employment including:

• Developing in 2012 a list of environmental goods in which APEC economies on which they will reduce applied tariffs to 5% or less by 2015, and eliminate non-tariff barriers to environmental goods and services, including local content requirements that distort trade and investment in these products and services, thereby helping to lower the cost and facilitate the use of environmental technologies, and create more green jobs;
  
  
• Pursuing a more aggressive target for reducing energy intensity across APEC economies by promoting technology and best practices in energy-smart buildings, transportation, and infrastructure;
  
  
• Phasing out inefficient fossil fuel subsidies – which encourage wasteful consumption -- and reporting on progress annually;
  
  
• Incorporating low-emissions development strategies into APEC economies' growth plans; and
  
  
• Working to prohibit trade in illegally harvested forest products and combat illegal logging and associated trade.

Promoting Regulatory Practices that Facilitate Trade and Investment

APEC has long recognized the importance of regulatory reform not only to boosting productivity and creating jobs, but also to protecting the environment and ensuring public health, security, and safety. In 2011, APEC Leaders agreed on steps that will improve the quality of the regulatory environment in the Asia-Pacific region, including:

• Implementing a set of good regulatory practices, including ensuring internal coordination of regulatory work, assessing impacts of regulations, and conducting public consultation, in order to reduce unnecessary burdens on businesses;
  
  
• Improving the quality of regulations and standards for emerging green technologies like smart grid, green buildings, and solar technologies to reduce technical barriers to trade in those products;
  
  
• Establishing a fund with the World Bank to strengthen food safety collaboration in the Asia-Pacific, accounting for nearly half of global food production; and
  
  
• Ensuring implementation of anti-corruption and open government commitments by 2014.

Other Key Initiatives

Regional Travel Facilitation

Travel facilitation was recognized as an increasingly important issue for the region. Ministers agreed upon two measures to facilitate regional travel, including: (1) recognizing the potential of “trusted traveler” programs and other risk management systems to facilitate the flow of cross-border travel throughout the region in an efficient and secure fashion; and (2) encouraging efforts by APEC economies to establish such programs and systems and link them to others in the region to create a more seamless travel system.

Women and the Economy

With the adoption of the San Francisco Declaration in September, APEC recognized the important role women play in an economy's economic growth strategy. Ministers agreed to further develop the role of women in their respective economies, by: (1) welcoming the establishment of the Policy Partnership on Women and the Economy; and (2) by agreeing to eliminate the major challenges (such as access to capital and access to markets) that inhibit women's full participation in commerce.

Disaster Resiliency

APEC Ministers endorsed a statement calling on officials to: (1) provide businesses with tools to help them prepare, (2) facilitate the movement of goods and services during disasters, (3) promote community based approaches, (4) support research and education, and (5) promote public-private partnerships. APEC economies recognized the need to incorporate the private sector more substantively in our emergency preparedness efforts and pledged develop public-private partnerships, based on six broad principles endorsed by Ministers, and report on their progress in 2012.

Food Security

Strengthening Health Systems

Ministers agreed upon three measures to strengthen health systems as part of a comprehensive health reform framework, including: (1) welcoming the joint Life Science Innovation Forum-Health Working Group APEC Action Plan to both reduce the economic burden of disease in the region through sharing best practices and establish public-private partnerships for the prevention and control of non-communicable diseases; (2) welcoming APEC's cooperation with the World Health Organization to develop an APEC Strategy on Aging in order to mitigate the constraint to APEC economies' economic growth potential posed by aging populations in the region; and (3) encouraging efforts to develop Age Friendly Economies using innovative policy, practices, and technologies to support healthy lives.

APEC Institutional Reform

Ministers welcomed further efforts to strengthen APEC as an institution, including by streamlining and right-sizing APEC groupings, improving accountability and communications on the part of sub-fora leaders, linking project funding more closely with top APEC priorities, and enhancing participation by the private sector into the overall APEC process.