core sector communique

Obama Says Asia-Pacific Region Is Engine for Growth

By Merle David Kellerhals Jr.

Staff Writer

Washington - President Obama told business executives from across the Asia-Pacific region November 12 that the United States sees the region "as an extraordinary engine for growth."

Obama - who is on a nine-day trip that takes him to Hawaii, Australia and Indonesia - said November 12 in Honolulu that the economies of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum represent nearly half of the world's trade and half of the world's output of goods and services. He met with business leaders at the APEC CEO Business Summit before the main meeting of the leaders from the 21 APEC economies on November 13.

After the APEC meetings in Honolulu, Obama travels to Canberra and Darwin to celebrate the 60th year of the U.S.-Australian alliance and to conduct bilateral talks with Australian leaders before attending the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit and the East Asia Summit, both Bali, Indonesia, before returning to Washington on November 20.

"The whole goal of APEC is to ensure that we are reducing barriers to trade and investment that can translate into concrete jobs here in the United States and all around the world," Obama told business leaders. "If we're going to grow it's going to be because of exports."

One of the crucial items on the agenda for the leaders' meeting is reducing barriers to trade and commerce to hasten the flow of goods and services. Obama made strengthening U.S. exports an essential economic objective and he is seeking to double U.S. exports by. 2015. This is part of a broad effort to rebalance the U.S. economy from one that is consumer driven to one that is a blend and more likely to weather downturns in the global economy. The United States and most advanced economies are still recovering from the 2007-2009 economic recession that was the most severe since the Great Depression of the early 1930s.

"We represent close to 3 billion people, from different continents and cultures," Obama told APEC leaders before a dinner November 12. "Our citizens have sent us here with a common task: to bring our economies closer together, to cooperate, to create jobs and prosperity that our people deserve so that they can provide for their families."

Obama also stressed in meeting with business executives that the United States is pivoting from a decade focused on post-9/11 conflict in Afghanistan and Iraq to one focused more broadly as a major Asia-Pacific power.

"We've turned our attention back to the Asia-Pacific region, and I think that it's paying off immediately in a whole range of improved relations with countries, and businesses are starting to see more opportunities as a consequence," Obama said.

A component of that effort is development of the nine-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), an initiative to create a free trade agreement among the nations of the Pacific Rim. The TPP nations are Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Chile, Malaysia, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, United States and Vietnam. Japan also announced it is interested in joining the partnership.

Negotiators announced November 12 that they have reached the broad outlines of a Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement among the nine countries. "We are confident that this agreement will be a model for ambition for other free trade agreements in the future, forging close linkages among our economies, enhancing our competitiveness, benefitting our consumers and supporting the creation and retention of jobs, higher living standards, and the reduction of poverty in our countries," the group said.

The TPP countries also said country negotiating teams will work out the remaining details of the trade agreement over the next year. Obama said the way ahead will involve some "hard negotiations and some tough work," adding that the negotiations with South Korea for the U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement serve as a model for prioritizing trade with a key partner.

(This is a product of the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State.)