John Armstrong: A summit in search of an identity

Close to 300 new BMW limousines are polished and primed in readiness to ferry official delegations between meeting venues and hotels.

The traditional "silly costume" leaders' group photo will this year feature the presidents and prime ministers fitted out in Mandarin-collared linen shirts with lotus petal-shaped embroidery.

The end-of-meeting communique has already been drafted - and the draft already leaked to the media.

On the surface, it looks very much like being business as usual at this week's Apec summit in Singapore. Two decades on from its inception, however, the seemingly heavyweight economic and trade forum is suffering something of an identity crisis.

Sure, Apec, which draws 10,000 delegates, media and other visitors, still plays a crucial role in enabling countries to use a multilateral forum ostensibly devoted to economic matters as cover for discussing major political and security issues.

As a prime example of how Apec "gathers the right people in the right space", Trade Minister Tim Groser cites how the Auckland summit in 1999 enabled the United States and China to start mending fences following Nato's bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade during the Kosovo War several months earlier.

However, despite membership which includes giant economies such as the United States, Japan and China, Apec's relevance is under question as it jostles for attention with other regional and global networks like Asean, the East Asia Summit and the G20 which are grabbing more of the limelight.

In contrast to those groupings, Apec has a credibility problem with political leaders too often having signed up to worthy objectives which they promptly ignore once back home.

Typically, the leaders annually pay homage to Apec's long-term goal of free and open trade and investment for industrialised economies by 2010 and for developing economies by 2020 - the so-called Bogor goals.

Trade barriers in the region have been cut substantially since the organisation was established in 1989. However, many members have short-circuited Apec's lumbering unilateral approach to trade liberalisation and stitched together preferential trade deals with one another. The result is a multiplicity of "noodle bowl"-like intertwining bilateral and regional trade agreements - some of which cut across Apec's goals.

The 2010 deadline now looms. But next year's stocktake on progress towards the Bogor goals is unlikely to reignite Apec's trade agenda because Japan will be the host and has opposed such unilateral pushes for free trade.

Groser describes himself as a "lite" sceptic when it comes to assessing Apec's progress. While Apec's contribution to trade liberalisation may be under question, Groser says total scepticism is not warranted because Apec has done much in terms of "trade facilitation" - making it easier to trade through speeding up customs procedures and so forth.

There is one potential bright light coming down the tunnel, though. The United States hosts the summit in 2011. Barack Obama's Administration is now contemplating weighing in behind Apec to push a free trade arrangement which spans the Pacific. This is being driven by concerns about China's push for an East Asian free trade pact plus other free trade blocs which could effectively shut American exporters out of Asia.

A free trade area covering the Asia-Pacific area as a whole could revitalise Apec, but is a concept which some member states have shown little enthusiasm for.

Just how firmly Obama will push the idea at Apec - if at all - is unclear.

Of crucial interest to New Zealand is whether the President and his advisers have yet decided whether an existing free trade arrangement between Brunei, Singapore, Chile and New Zealand - known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership or "TransPac" for short - could be the starting point for building a wider free trade area.

Obama's dilemma is that further moves to free up trade will not go down well in recession-struck America generally and within his own Democratic party in particular.

He may be reluctant to chew up political capital on promoting a relatively minor player like TransPac and may prefer to wait until a bigger initiative involving more economies can be put together.

The previous Bush Administration opened negotiations with "TransPac" only for Obama to postpone them on coming to office pending a review of his country's trade policy.

The US President was scheduled to give a major speech to the CEO business summit, which runs alongside Apec, and which delegates had hoped would spell out his administration's trade priorities.

However, a change in schedule has truncated Obama's time in Singapore, such that he will arrive too late to make the speech. What is left of his time here is stacked with meetings which leave little opportunity for a major announcement on trade.

He is making a speech in Japan a day earlier giving his view of "American engagement in Asia". That may give a pointer on his administration's thinking about Apec. But the fact the speech is not now being made at Apec may say more about the Americans' thinking than the speech reveals.

APEC
When: Today to Saturday
Where: Singapore

* John Armstrong will be in Singapore covering the Apec meeting for the Herald.