By ERIA-Dec 2017
November 2017 was an important month for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and East Asian countries as they hosted three important leader summits: the Asia– Pacific Economic Partnership (APEC) Summit, the ASEAN Summit, and the East Asia Summit. Although these events are held every year, this year’s summits are particularly important due to the changed global landscape following the election of United States President Donald Trump.
As an organization established to push for open regionalism and multilateralism, APEC is facing a unique challenge this year now that the United States is withdrawing its support for multilateralism in favour of bilateralism. In his speech delivered during the APEC CEO Summit held in Da Nang, Viet Nam from 8–10 November 2017, President Donald Trump emphasized that partnership should be based on mutual respect and directed toward mutual gain with private entities able to compete on a fair and equal basis and each party to an agreement accountable for its actions.
Whereas bilateralism provides a great degree of flexibility both in terms of process and its ability to reconcile disparate interests, the rapid growth of bilateral trade agreements (BTAs) will fragment the world trading system (Menon, 2006). Further, the positive or negative impact of a BTA on the world trading system is highly dependent on the motivation behind pursuit of the BTA. For instance, if the preferences provided by the BTA aim to divert trade previously conducted with a country that was a lower-cost supplier, the BTA would in effect be a welfare- reducing trade agreement. Finally, the proliferation of BTAs
would reproduce extremely complicated duplication of rules that the multilateral or regional trade system was designed to simplify and streamline. Asia’s resolve to maintain the momentum of multilateralism and globalization are manifested through three main milestones reached at the summit. First, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) summit was inaugurated, with the instruction by country leaders to the ministers and negotiators to intensify efforts to conclude the RCEP negotiations in 2018. Second, the leaders signed the ‘ASEAN Consensus on the Protection and Promotion of the Rights of Migrant Workers’. Third, ASEAN welcomed and signed the conclusion of the negotiations for the ASEAN– Hong Kong, China (HKC) Free Trade Agreement and the ASEAN–HKC Investment Agreement on 12 November 2017.
