Rejecting criticism by China that the goals of US President Barck Obama’s administration for this week’s APEC summit are too ambitious, US Trade Representative Ron Kirk said the US would “push the envelope” to promote trade in renewable energy technology.
Kirk is seeking an agreement with 20 other APEC members to lower tariffs on environmental goods and services, a move supported by companies such as General Electric and Applied Materials. The US has pushed for free trade in those products as part of the stalled Doha Round of WTO talks.
“I understand China may be uncomfortable with it,” Kirk said on Monday in an interview in Washington. “We’re always going to try to push the envelope and encourage our partners to be more assertive, more forward-thinking. We don’t serve the interests of American entrepreneurs and innovators if we go in and always see the floor as the highest level of ambition.”
The Obama administration also has called for nations at the APEC meetings in Honolulu this weekend to find ways to expand trade overall and to coordinate regulations.
The US goal is “too ambitious and is beyond the reach of developing economies,” Chinese Assistant Foreign Minister Wu Hailong (吳海龍) said at a press briefing in Beijing on Monday.
The Obama administration is also working at the meetings on a trade deal with eight Pacific nations and looking beyond them to the prospects of adding Japan and China.
An accord among the Pacific Rim nations would be the first trade deal that Obama signed rather than inherited, and the biggest for the US since the North American Free Trade Agreement with Canada and Mexico that took effect in 1994.
Rules regarding treatment of workers and protections for the environment are among the most difficult in those talks, Kirk said. Obama pledged in his 2008 campaign for president to pursue those issues in future trade negotiations.
The current Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) talks are with Australia, Chile, Peru and Singapore, all of which already have separate free-trade agreements with the US, as well as with Malaysia, New Zealand, Vietnam and Brunei. The Chinese Ministry of Commerce said on Monday that such regional agreements should not replace wider trade regimes.
“TPP has set very high benchmarks, whether or not all these members will reach that high benchmark we’ll have to wait and see,” Chinese Assistant Minister of Commerce Yu Jianhua (俞建華) said at the briefing in Beijing.
Malaysia wants to have the flexibility during TPP negotiations to protect “sensitive” areas of the economy, Malaysian International Trade and Industry Minister Mustapa Mohamed told reporters yesterday in Putrajaya, near Kuala Lumpur.
The country gives preferential treatment for some state contracts to ethnic Malays and indigenous people.
Negotiating now with Vietnam, a closed-market economy, gives the US a chance to work through some of the issues it would face later with China, Michael Green, a senior adviser with the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said in an interview.
“We gave Vietnam all the space and understand they are in a different place,” Kirk said.
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